Homer: influences, peers and legacy

Every connection with its receipt

Homer sits at the origin point of Western literature, but he was never alone: behind the Iliad and Odyssey lies centuries of oral formulaic performance, Near Eastern epic, and the sung traditions of Ionian bards. This mix traces the material Homer inherited, the singers and vase-painters who shared his world, and the long chain of poets who have rewritten him ever since.

The Kynda mix for Homer

• Key Influence · The Epic of Gilgamesh by Anonymous (Sîn-lēqi-unninni, standard version) (c. 1200 BCE). Scholars of Near Eastern comparative literature have long noted structural parallels between Gilgamesh and Homeric epic: the hero grieving an inseparable companion (Gilgamesh/Enkidu, Achilles/Patroclus), the journey to the edge of the world, the encounter with the dead, and the refusal of immortality. Akkadian epic circulated widely across the Bronze Age Levant and Anatolia, the same trade world that fed Ionian oral tradition.
• Influencia Obscura · Song of Release (Song of Liberation) by Anonymous (Hurrian-Hittite bilingual, Hattusa archives) (c. 1400 BCE). Excavated at Boğazköy in the 1980s, this Hurro-Hittite narrative song concerns a besieged city destroyed after its elders refuse to release captives — a plot skeleton unnervingly close to Troy's fall. Anatolian sung narrative is Homer's nearest neighbour geographically, since Ionia faced the Hittite hinterland, yet almost no general reader knows this text exists. A genuine hidden thread in epic prehistory.
• Local Roots · Fragments (elegies for Nanno; Smyrneis) by Mimnermus of Colophon (c. 630 BCE). Mimnermus worked in Ionia, in the very cities — Colophon, Smyrna — that competed for the claim to be Homer's birthplace. His surviving elegiac fragments recycle Homeric diction and imagery of leaves and mortality, and his Smyrneis narrated local warfare in epic register. He is the closest thing we have to a native Ionian continuation of the sung tradition Homer's language belongs to.
• Beyond the Medium · Dipylon Amphora (Geometric funerary krater, Athens) by Dipylon Master (c. 750 BCE). This monumental grave vase, made in Athens around the very decades the Homeric poems were taking fixed shape, shows a laid-out corpse surrounded by mourners tearing their hair — the prothesis ritual that Homer describes for Patroclus and Hector. Geometric funerary art and epic lament are two expressions of one aristocratic death culture, and archaeologists routinely read them against each other.
• Peer · Theogony by Hesiod (c. 700 BCE). Hesiod composed in the same dactylic hexameter and the same artificial Ionic-Aeolic dialect as Homer, drawing on the identical stock of oral formulae, yet turned it toward cosmogony and farmers' time rather than heroes. Antiquity paired them so closely it invented a poetry contest between the two, and modern Homerists read Hesiod as the essential control sample for what Greek hexameter tradition could do.
• From the Canon · The Iliad by Homer (c. 750–700 BCE). Fifteen thousand hexameters covering some fifty days of the tenth year at Troy, built entirely from the anger of Achilles and closing not with the city's fall but with Priam kissing the hands that killed his son. Milman Parry's 1920s–30s analysis of its repeated formulae proved it grew from generations of oral performance, making it simultaneously the West's first book and the record of a pre-literate art.
• Key Collaborator · The Iliad of Homer (verse translation) by Alexander Pope (1715–1720). Pope's rhymed couplet Iliad was the commercial and artistic triumph that freed him from patrons, sold by subscription and effectively making Homer an English poet for two centuries. Keats knew Homer through the Chapman version, Pope through everything else; Richard Bentley's jab that it was a pretty poem but not Homer became the founding complaint of translation criticism.
• Legacy · Aeneid by Virgil (19 BCE). Virgil constructed his Latin epic as a deliberate response to both Homeric poems: books 1–6 shadow the Odyssey's wanderings, 7–12 the Iliad's warfare, down to funeral games, a shield description and a katabasis. Ancient critics catalogued his borrowings as furta, thefts, and Virgil reportedly said stealing from Homer was easier attempted than done. The single most consequential act of Homeric reception.

What influenced Homer

• The Song of Kumarbi (Kingship in Heaven) by Anonymous (Hittite cuneiform tablets). The Song of Kumarbi (Kingship in Heaven) (Anonymous (Hittite cuneiform tablets)) — ghost for Homer “==== Genre ==== When it was discovered in the 19th century, the story of Gilgamesh was classified as a Greek epic, a genre known in Europe, even though it predates the Greek culture that spawned epics, specifically, when Herodotus referr…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Dipylon Amphora (Geometric funerary krater, Athens) by Dipylon Master. Dipylon Amphora (Geometric funerary krater, Athens) (Dipylon Master) — culture for Homer “== See also == List of Greek vase painters Pottery of ancient Greece == References and sources == References Sources Roisman, Joseph, and translated by J.C Yardley, Ancient Greece from Homer to Alexander (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2011) …” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Epic of Gilgamesh by Anonymous (Sîn-lēqi-unninni, standard version). The Epic of Gilgamesh (Anonymous (Sîn-lēqi-unninni, standard version)) — titan for Homer
• Baal Cycle by Anonymous (Ugaritic tablets, scribe Ilimilku). Baal Cycle (Anonymous (Ugaritic tablets, scribe Ilimilku)) — titan for Homer
• Song of Release (Song of Liberation) by Anonymous (Hurrian-Hittite bilingual, Hattusa archives). Song of Release (Song of Liberation) (Anonymous (Hurrian-Hittite bilingual, Hattusa archives)) — ghost for Homer
• Mask of Agamemnon by Anonymous (Mycenaean goldsmith; excavated by Heinrich Schliemann). Mask of Agamemnon (Anonymous (Mycenaean goldsmith; excavated by Heinrich Schliemann)) — culture for Homer

Peers and kindred spirits

• Theogony by Hesiod. Theogony (Hesiod) — peer for Homer “700 BC) was an Ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Miguel de Cervantes (1547). Fuentes groups Cervantes with Homer as part of a shared narrative tradition. “Mexican author Carlos Fuentes suggested that Cervantes and his contemporary William Shakespeare form part of a narrative tradition that includes Homer , Dante , Defoe , Dickens , Balzac , and Joyce.” (Wikipedia)
• Frank Ocean. Ocean founded the luxury company Homer. “In a Q&A sent in the press release, Homer was simply stated as "an independent American luxury company founded by Frank Ocean".” (Wikipedia)
• Prada. Ocean’s jewelry company Homer collaborated with Prada. “The jewelry company, which has already collaborated with Prada , [ 106 ] cites inspiration from "childhood obsessions" and "heritage as a fantasy".” (Wikipedia)
• Fragments (elegies for Nanno; Smyrneis) by Mimnermus of Colophon. Fragments (elegies for Nanno; Smyrneis) (Mimnermus of Colophon) — geography for Homer “He was strongly influenced by Homer, yet he wrote short poems suitable for performance at drinking parties and was remembered by ancient authorities chiefly as a love poet.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Fragments by Archilochus of Paros. Fragments (Archilochus of Paros) — geography for Homer “The Naxian's fate interested later authors such as Plutarch and Dio Chrysostom, since it had been a fair fight yet he was punished for it by the gods: He had gone to the temple of Apollo at Delphi to consult the oracle and was rebuked wi…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Iliad of Homer (verse translation) by Alexander Pope (1715). The Iliad of Homer (verse translation) (Alexander Pope) — collaborator for Homer “An exponent of Augustan literature, Pope is best known for his satirical and discursive poetry including An Essay on Criticism (1711), The Rape of the Lock (1712–1717), The Dunciad (1728–1743), and for his translations of Homer.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Odyssey (translation) by Emily Wilson (2017). The Odyssey (translation) (Emily Wilson) — collaborator for Homer “In 2017, her translation of Homer's Odyssey was the first by a woman into English verse.” (en.wikipedia.org)

Who Homer influenced

• Virgil (-70). Virgil's Aeneid opening was modeled after Homer's invocation to the Muse. (also via The Odyssey, Iliad, Odyssey) “A similar opening was later employed by Virgil in his Aeneid” (Wikipedia)
• Ulysses by James Joyce (1922). Ulysses (James Joyce) — legacy for Homer (also via Odyssey) “Joyce, in Ulysses , modeled the journey of his hero Leopold Bloom on the adventures of Odysseus .” (Wikipedia)
• Alexander Pope. Pope, as translator, praises Homer as the greatest of poets in his preface. (also via The Iliad of Homer (verse translation)) “in the preface to his translation of the Iliad , Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets"” (Wikipedia)
• Omeros by Derek Walcott (1990). Omeros (Derek Walcott) — legacy for Homer “The Nobel committee described Walcott's work as "a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment", with the jury report praising him as the "Caribbean Homer".” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Dante Alighieri (1265). Dante's Divine Comedy references Homer as the sovereign poet through Virgil's character. “In Dante Alighieri 's Divine Comedy , Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets” (Wikipedia)
• Xenophanes of Colophon. Xenophanes critically engaged with Homer's depiction of the gods. “The earliest preserved comments on Homer concern his treatment of the gods, which hostile critics such as the poet Xenophanes of Colophon denounced as immoral” (Wikipedia)
• Theagenes of Rhegium (-600). Theagenes engaged with Homer's works through allegorical defense. “The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems are allegories” (Wikipedia)
• Demetrios Chalkokondyles. Chalkokondyles published the first printed edition of Homer's works. “In 1488, the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published in Florence the editio princeps of the Homeric poems” (Wikipedia)
• François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac (1604). d'Aubignac critically attacked the authenticity and quality of Homer's poems. “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” (Wikipedia)
• Richard Bentley (1794). Bentley theorized about Homer's identity and relation to the transmitted epics. “the English scholar Richard Bentley concluded that Homer did exist but that he was an obscure, prehistoric oral poet whose compositions bear little relation to the Iliad and the Odyssey as they have been passed down” (Wikipedia)
• Giambattista Vico (1668). Vico's philological treatise analyzed and theorized about Homer's authorship. “Giambattista Vico analysed Homer and other ancient writings in his philological treatise The New Science (1744) and concluded that Homer was not one man, but many” (Wikipedia)
• Friedrich August Wolf (1759). Wolf's Prolegomena ad Homerum presented influential scholarship on Homer's composition. “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” (Wikipedia)
• Milman Parry (1902). Parry and Lord developed influential oral-formulaic theory about Homer's composition method. “Starting in around 1928, Milman Parry and Albert Lord , after they studied folk bards in the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" that the Homeric poems were originally composed through improvised oral performances” (Wikipedia)
• Albert Lord (1912). Lord co-developed the Oral-Formulaic Theory about Homeric composition. “Starting in around 1928, Milman Parry and Albert Lord , after they studied folk bards in the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory"” (Wikipedia)
• Richard Janko (1955). Janko provided scholarly dating analysis of Homer's poems. “Richard Janko has proposed a date for both poems to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics” (Wikipedia)
• Barry B. Powell (1997). Powell used Herodotus's statements to date Homer's works. “Barry B. Powell dates the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey to sometime between 800 and 750 BC, based on the statement from Herodotus” (Wikipedia)
• Gregory Nagy (1942). Nagy proposed a theory of Homer as an evolving oral tradition. “a few American scholars such as Gregory Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving tradition, which grew much more stable as the tradition progressed” (Wikipedia)
• Heinrich Schliemann (1822). Schliemann's archaeological discovery was directly motivated by and connected to Homer's depiction of Troy. “in 1873 Heinrich Schliemann announced to the world that he had discovered the ruins of Homer's Troy at Hisarlik in modern Turkey” (Wikipedia)
• Walter Arend (1930). Arend named and analyzed a recurring stylistic feature in Homer's works. “The so-called " type scenes " ( typische Szenen ), were named by Walter Arend in 1933” (Wikipedia)
• Cicero (-106). Cicero referenced the tradition of Homeric textual transmission under Pisistratus. “The idea that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and first written down during the reign of Pisistratus is referenced by the first-century BC Roman orator Cicero” (Wikipedia)
• Zenodotus of Ephesus. Zenodotus helped establish the canonical text of Homer's works. “Homeric scholars such as Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium and in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped establish a canonical text” (Wikipedia)
• Aristarchus of Samothrace (-217). Aristarchus was a key scholar establishing the canonical Homeric text. “in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped establish a canonical text” (Wikipedia)
• Plato (-427). The Iliad (Homer) — culture for Plato (via The Iliad) “He speaks approvingly of this, and other forms of divine madness (drunkenness, eroticism, and dreaming) in the Phaedrus, and yet in the Republic wants to outlaw Homer's great poetry, and laughter as well.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Aristotle (-384). Iliad (Homer) — culture for Aristotle (via Iliad) “Alexander's education probably included a number of subjects, such as ethics and politics, as well as standard literary texts, like Euripides and Homer.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Nausicaä's character was partly inspired by Homer's Odyssey. (via Odyssey) “The main character, Nausicaä , was partly inspired by the character from Homer 's Odyssey” (Wikipedia)
• Martin Litchfield West (1937). West argued the Iliad shows influence from Hesiod's poetry. (via Iliad) “Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes the poetry of Hesiod and that it must have been composed around 660–650 BC at the earliest” (Wikipedia)
• Leonard Baskin (1922). Baskin's prints are illustrations for Homer's Iliad, a literary source. (via Iliad) “Leonard Baskin is seen in prints from his illustra tions for the Illiad” (Evening Star (Washington, D.C.))
• Stanley Kubrick (1928). Kubrick explains using Homer's Odyssey as a model of literary merit and inspiration for the film's title. (via The Odyssey) “It occurred to us that for the Greeks the vast stretches of the sea must have had the same sort of mystery and remoteness that space has for our generation.” (Wikipedia)
• As I Lay Dying. The novel’s title comes from the Odyssey. (via Odyssey) “The title of As I Lay Dying comes from Homer 's Odyssey , where it is spoken by Agamemnon in the past tense: "As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades."” (Wikipedia)
• Aeneid by Virgil (19). Aeneid (Virgil) — legacy for Homer “The work, modelled after Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, chronicles the journey of a warrior and refugee of the Trojan War, named Aeneas, as he struggles to fulfill his destiny.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Percy Jackson. The Odyssey (Homer) — culture for Percy Jackson (via The Odyssey) (wikidata.org)