Any attempt to describe the world of Homer and Hesiod must start with their texts.1 Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days are classified as epics and generally dated to 750-650 in histories of Greek literature.2 The epic is conventionally regarded as a genre which conveys to its audience already existing traditions without much intervention by the poet. It is commonly held that these texts therefore reflect the societies of the periods in which the traditions brought together in the epics originated, i. e., that epics are a more or less consciously created “amalgam” of different periods, down to the time they were written down. However, the ever-continuing discussion of the nature of these texts and the historical realities they contain indicates that things cannot be so simple.3 The debate, which has become almost impossible to survey, cannot be covered in detail here, but we will briefly set out our views on the main points.
Central to every historical analysis is the answer to the question of how Homer’s and Hesiod’s texts were created. For a long time, the dominant view was that they are part of a long tradition of “oral poetry,” which survived because it was recorded in writing. Although oral poetry changed constantly, it, nevertheless, preserved core elements which reached back to Mycenaean times at least. Texts were produced, it was thought, through “composition in performance,” in which bards reproduced existing texts, which however they would modify - to an extent unwittingly - with every recital. Homer and Hesiod were to be seen as such oral poets, with the qualification that their texts differed from older, unpreserved versions in scale and quality. Proponents of this view continue to argue about when the extant written versions were produced - according to the most extreme idea it did not happen until the classical age.4
This kind of reduction of the bard to an anonymous figure was opposed by advocates of so-called “neoanalysis” who emphasized the independent creative contribution of the poet to the epic text (Kullmann 1984). The poet would have made
A Companion to Archaic Greece Edited by Kurt A. Raaflaub and Hans van Wees © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-0-631-23045-8
Use of fixed oral or oral-derived texts consciously to create a new work of his own. Where neoanalysis already markedly reduces the significance of orality, “narratology” is only marginally interested in the possible oral pre-history of the texts. Narratologists analyze the written epic texts by means of literary methods, and shift to the “oralists” the burden of proof that the epics’ oral origins make this inappropriate (De Jong 1995; Blaise 1996).
These three views on the origin and thus the character of the epics are by no means based merely upon linguistic or philological arguments. They are also linked to underlying assumptions about the nature of the historical reality in which the texts originated. For example, those who take “oral poetry” as their starting point also postulate that the epic emerged in a “heroic age” characterized by a heroic-aristocratic competitive ethos. In their oral performances, the poets conveyed values central to this “heroic age” for the aristocracy’s pleasure and instruction. Why the traditions of this world should have endured throughout turbulent historical epochs into the Archaic Age is rarely explicitly explained. Implictly, however, it is assumed that a “Greek” people existed from at least the second millennium bce, and that the existence of a people entails the existence of (national) oral traditions which preserve their core despite all historical change.
Neoanalysis and narratology, by contrast, in their different ways allow the poet to comment upon well-known, distinct oral or written texts which are not subject to continuous change. This liberates the poets from both the almost compulsory association with a “heroic age” and from dependence upon a supposed national tradition. This makes it possible for them to adopt a non-aristocratic perspective as well, and even to criticize existing conditions by means of commenting on existing texts. Since they postulate that fixed motifs and texts formed the basis for the creation of new works, neoanalysis and narratology tend to assume that the poets’ world knew and used writing, and also to allow for the possibility of external influences.
When it comes to deciding in favor of one of these positions with a view to historical evaluation of Homer’s and Hesiod’s works, one is in danger of falling into circular argument. In the absence of other evidence, one is forced to deduce from the epics themselves the historical conditions under which they were created. An important step in breaking out of this circle is to examine the central modern concepts usually used in describing the “historical” worlds of the texts, because these concepts are not mere translations of key terms preserved in the texts, but they place the world of the texts into overarching historical frames of reference. This step can here be illustrated, by way of example, only with the concept of “a people” or “nation” (Volk), as used especially in German-language scholarship. Without “a people,” of course, an oral “national” tradition (Volkstradition) could not have existed. The simple question is: what is a people, and where does it come from?
Contrary to what is often assumed, even today, “peoples” are not early but very late forms of human community. The belief that the “nation” is a primordial entity arose from Romantic thought as it developed in the late eighteenth century. Against this, more recent scholarship has been able to show - particularly by means of an analysis of the peoples of the so-called European migrations - that “nations” emerge only under certain demographic conditions and with the aid of fictive stories of origin so that, as a distinct political unit, they may advance their claims to power more successfully. But even when they had come into existence in this manner, nations were not - and still are not - fixed entities defined by straightforward (ethnic and/or cultural) criteria. To describe the complex processes which lead to the emergence of a nation, the term “ethnogenesis” has been coined (Pohl and Reimitz 1998; Gillett 2002). The notion of a highly characteristic “national tradition” which reaches far back into the past thus no longer has any foundation, nor is there any reason left to think that the different forms of human society are not comparable to one another.
As with the term “people,” which plays such a crucial role in some traditional interpretations, we must examine carefully whether other key terms such as “state,” “king,” “aristocracy,” “office” and “justice” are applicable to the period in which Homer’s and Hesiod’s texts were created.5 Archaeological research has shown that the inhabitants of the Balkans and the coast of Anatolia lived in small settlements, distinct but with an essentially simple structure. Before the start of the seventh century, demographic developments in many places produce small towns.6 We can infer that the works of Homer and Hesiod were composed in a world where “states” were only just beginning to form. Accordingly, a historical and literary evaluation of these texts should not merely apply concepts derived from the world of the state but take into account the entire spectrum of concepts and models developed by anthroplogy (cf. Sahlins 1972; Johnson and Earle 1987), philology and historical theory. A convincing interpretation will choose from this array with the aid of a model which accommodates as many as possible - ideally all - of the elements which make up the world of the epics. Since this chapter analyzes texts, it can only discover literary worlds.7 These, however, can then be compared with the worlds “reconstructed” by archaeology and its models, and with information derived from Near Eastern sources (Morris 2000; chs. 3, 4, above). It is only this comparison which enables us to draw conclusions about the historicity of the societies portrayed in the epics.
World History
