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Warfare in Homer

from Key Topics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2020

Edited by
Corinne Ondine Pache
Edited in association with
Casey Dué ,
Susan Lupack  and
Robert Lamberton
Corinne Ondine Pache
Affiliation:
Trinity University, San Antonio
Casey Dué
Affiliation:
University of Houston
Susan Lupack
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Sydney
Robert Lamberton
Affiliation:
Washington University, St Louis
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Summary

The Homeric epics are the Ur-texts in Western culture that encapsulate and convey what happens to human beings (soldiers and civilians) and human societies (Greek and Anatolian) when they are at war. Here we discuss how the Homeric poems function as central enculturating stories about war from their formative period as diverse oral songs in the late Greek Bronze Age (1500‒1200 b.c.e.) through their coalescence eventually as canonical texts in the Greek historical period (800‒500 b.c.e.) and the qualities in the Iliad and Odyssey that have given rise in modern times (1870 to the present) to wonder, horror, admiration, bewilderment, cynicism, and idealism in war veterans, war poets, storytellers, and prominent thinkers from Friedrich Nietzsche and Simone Weil to Wilfred Owen, Yusef Komunyakaa, Allen Ginsburg, Tim O’Brien, and Alice Oswald.

Keywords

kleoswar storypublic honorviolence
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Guide to Homer , pp. 395 - 398
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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