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Sniffing out Homer

© Suzi Goode

Over the next few weeks, I'll be exploring the life and times of Homer and how The ILIAD and The ODYSSEY led to rich discoveries at a time when everyone thought these epic poems were nothing but legends about a distant, perhaps non-existent time in history. By the end of this series, which will include a look at how Heinrich Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans proved the Homeric Epics were founded on truth, I hope to have deepened your understanding of Homer so that you will have a chance to be amazed at a new non-fiction book Yale University has published, linking the Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark.

When did Homer live? In the ninth century before Christ, or as many historians prefer to call it today, the Dark Ages. Forthcoming articles will deal more fully with his life and daily life. Homer was looked upon by the last few centuries as an expert storyteller of legends even though ancient Greeks poets drew upon his Epic Cycles for material to write their poems.

Where did Homer get his facts? As historians do today, he made use of materials from his past. For example, one of the sticking points with historians before the nineteenth century was that Homer wrote about a strange type of shield when no such thing had ever been discovered:

Hector carried a shield "like a tower, made of bronze and seven layers of leather. Tychius, the master-currier, who lived at Hyle, made this glittering shield for him with the hides of seven big bulls, which he overlaid with an eighth layer of bronze. Holding this shield before his breast, Telmonian Aias went right up to Hector before halting to defy him."

This passage proved critical to Heinrich Schliemann, who discovered Troy. He was a fascinating man, driven by the need to explore and to know what had happened in the past. It wasn't the recent past that kindled his interest, but rather the ancient past - an ancient past, which nineteenth century historians could only dream about. He wondered if Homer's Troy had really existed and if it had, where had it been located? Could its ruins still be explored if they were discovered? Schliemann was so adamant that the city of Troy existed, that he determined to find it.

He was born in 1822 in the city of Mecklenburg in what is now North Germany. As a child he read Homer's The ILIAD and The ODYSSEY and dreamed of the places he read about in this long-lost history of a long-lost people. Finding this ancient city became an obsession with him. More than anything, he wanted to make his fortune so he could spend his time looking for these places.

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