History Of Troy, The Iliad And Homeric Quest

History of Troy, the Iliad and Homeric Quest

Introduction

The Achilles shield is described in the XVIII song of the Iliad, an epic whose authorship is discussed. In this work there will be a brief exhibition of the history of Troy to then contextualize the Trojan War and summarize the Iliad broadly. In addition, the arguments for and against Homero will be included as the author of this poem along with other data.

Developing

Trojan history

Troy, inhabited from the beginning of the third millennium to.C., He was in the current Turkish province of çanakkale, next to the Strait of the Dardanelles, surrounded by the Racias Esmandro and Simois. Greek mythology says that Dárdano, son of Electra and Zeus, goes to Asia Minor where he marries Batiea, daughter of Teucro, after which he founded Dardania, thus initiating the Royal Troyan family. The kingdom then passes through the hands of his grandson, after what his son Ganimedes is kidnapped by Zeus and his son of him ilo Ilion. The latter finds the statue known as "Paladio", which had fallen from heaven, which would avoid, according to an oracle, that the city was assaulted while remained in it. Later, Ilo commands to build a temple of Athena in the exact place where the statue had fallen.

This city is known as Troy/Ilion since it takes the name of its first kings: a fusion of teucro, tros and illion. The gentilicio of its inhabitants is "Teucros". From the Bronze Age, Troy has had the entrance to the Helespo and the different existing routes around him under his control.

They probably dedicated themselves to international trade – having the control they had on the routes; to the breeding of horses; And to textile production, since various weighters have been found. However, the remains that we keep from its exports are reduced to a type of ceramic called "Troy Gray Ceramics".

About 500 to.C. There was a great earthquake that destroyed some of the most famous Troy buildings. After centuries of oblivion, their ruins were found by Heinrich Schliemann in excavations in 1871. There are not many more data about the Trojans, apart from the fact that the city was destroyed and reoccupied several times during history and that at least nine cities were built on top. Part of the information we have is thanks to the various excavations made in the place and thanks to the preserved texts, among which the hititas stand out. These confirm the relationship that was for hundreds of years between the Trojan kings and the great King Hitita. It is also worth mentioning that the moment of greatest splendor of the Trojans coincides with the rise of the Hitita Empire.

The hititas began as small kingdoms with little power and evolved until a great empire in the seventeenth century to.V., When they established their capital in Hattusa. They became so powerful that they faced Babylon and overthrew their old dynasty. From then until its end in the twelfth century to.C. There was a constant rivalry with Egypt. PERIODS IN HISARLIK Hill is believed to be self-sufficient, although they marketed with other recent bronze powers (such as Troy).

They reached their greatest boom in the fourteenth and twelfth centuries, specifically during the reign of Suppilulium I, when the Empire expanded towards Syrian northern and had various conflictors with the Egyptians of the New Empire. His last king was Tudhaliva IV, who reigned from 1227 to 1209. The Hitita Empire comes to an end to 1200 to.C.

Homeric question

Traditionally, it is said that Homer was a Greek Aedo who created the Iliad and the Odyssey. However, his life is an unknowns for us. First, it is believed that his name can come from ὅμηρος or ὁ μή ὁρῶν, which means ‘he who does not see’, since according to history he was a blind poet. Secondly, it is not very clear about his birth date or his hometown. Herodotus, for example, writes "Homer and Hesiod were prior to me, I think, only four hundred years" (History II 53.2), so he could have been born over the seventh century to.C. Regarding his birthplace, his biographies that have come to us from antiquity contemplate the following places: Athens, Salamina, Rodas, Colophon, Island of Quios and Esmirna. The majority of researchers say that he had to have been born in one of the Jonias cities, specifically on the island of Quios.

To the lack of concrete data on his biography, more problems are added: if Homer lived about 450 years after the Trojan War took place, how could he get enough information to capture it in his works? The aggregates and changes that have been made during the archaic and classical times to the Iliad and the Odyssey – such as the introduction of singing X in the Iliad – resulted in that since ancient times the authorship of these two works be questioned. The first to notice discrepancies were his Alexandrian editors, Zenódoto de Éphes. In 1664 the French Adab D’Aubignac argues that they are two poems that pisstrate sent "reissue".

In 1795, Fedrich August Wolf publishes prolegomena ad homerum, a book in which he also argues – among other reasons, because in the Greece of the VIII century to.C. There was no writing – that pisstrate was the one who ordered to compile a committee both poems. Wolf creates in the nineteenth century the "analytical critic", which encompasses all those criticisms that deny Homer as the author of both epic. The main arguments for these criticisms are: repetitions, style changes, tongue contradictions – wind, arcadio, chipriot, etc., which makes the Homeric Language be known as an artificial language -, ..

There are two main theories about the composition of the poems: the first is that of the extension, established by Hermann, which argues that it was later rapsodas that expanded the main plots of the Iliad and the Odyssey – the cholera of Achilles and the return of Ulises to Itaca, respectively – until reaching the current state; The second is that of the compilation, created by Kirchhoff and applied to the Odyssey by Wilamowitz, which says that both poems are compilations created by a poet starting from previous epic poems previous.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the "unitary criticism" arises, which combines the arguments in favor of the unity of homeric poems. These researchers argue that the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey is Homer, who has compiled the stories transmitted by a long oral tradition. Within this "unitary critic" we find Drerup, who argues in 1914 that there are composition characteristics similar to those of the geometric style in the ceramics of the eighth century in the song V of the Iliad.

In addition, Milman Parry demonstrates that existing repetitions and contradictions are due to the fact that these epic have been transmitted mostly by oral tradition and that, therefore, those of "analytical criticism" should not use those arguments to say that Homer is not The creator of both poems. Regarding the characteristics that are considered of Homer’s own are: the urbanity and humanity that can be observed, for example, in various manifestations of friendship – like that of sponsorship and Achilles–; And the great drama, since in both epic the central themes are the suffering and destiny of the protagonists.

Homer is also attributed other parodic poems that have been inherited from antiquity. Of them we only complete the batracomiomaquia, a composition of 303 verses. In this work a battle is collected between frogs and mice, whose argument is influenced by a fable of Aesop’s life: a frog meets a mouse and in the end the latter dies drowned in a pond.

It was divided into three parts, all of them with a similar length: the first account the causes of the war, the second narrates the preparations and in the third the outcome occurs. It is a burlesque poem due to: the lack of importance of the argument, the contrast between the characters and the parody that is made of the typical epic resources – both of the verse, as of the proem, the invocation of the muses, etc.-.

Iliad

Characteristic

It is the oldest Greek epic of Western literature. It is composed of 15693 verses later divided into 24 songs by Zenóot 909. It is written in a cult form of ancient Greek, with different dialects. Its verses are dactilic hexameters, which consist of the repetition of a unit formed by a long syllable and two brief – or another long – six times; Each verse is separated from the next thanks to a pause. It tells what happened for 51 days in the tenth and last year of the Trojan War, specifically an episode: that of Achilles’ cholera, king of Ftía, the bravest of the Greek warriors. The outcome of the war does not appear in this work, but in the Aeneid of Virgil: Odysseus proposes to enter Trojan hidden in a giant wooden horse that they will leave at the doors of the city; After achieving it, they leave their hiding place during the night and begin to attack the Trojans.

Summary

A muse tells the plague that Achaeans suffered because Agamemnon, king of these, had not returned to her father, Crises, priest of Apollo; He finally returns it and demands that Achilles also returned to his slave Briseida, which makes him angry and decides to stop fighting in the war. Agamemnon summons an assembly and proposes his companions to flee, but they reject this idea. Menelao, Brother of Agameón, and Paris, son of Priam and the one who had kidnapped Helena, Menelao’s wife,. Finally, Aphrodite saves Paris from the wrath of Menelao, who wanted to take revenge.

Then there is a brief truce, after which the fight continues. The Trojans manage to approach the Achaean camp thanks to a series of victories. Achilles, meanwhile, rejected the requests of his companions to return to war. However, Patroclio, Amilos de Achilles, leaves the battlefield carrying the weapons and the Achilles armor, after which he is killed by Héctor. This fact leads Achilles to return to war. Full of hate, he kills Héctor and tends to his body, refusing to return him to the Trojans.