Homer the Preclassic

One hundred thirty years after the Capture of Troy as narrated by the Homer of this Life of Homer, Aeolian cities were founded on the island of Lesbos (Vita 1.540–543), which had previously existed without any city (1.543 apolis).

Twenty years after this settlement, Aeolian Cyme was founded (1.543–544).

Eighteen years after this founding, Aeolian Smyrna was founded by Cyme and, at this moment, Homer was born (1.545–547); thus Homer was born 168 years after the Capture of Troy (1.552–553).

Six hundred twenty-two years after the birth of Homer, Xerxes crossed the Hellespont from Asia Minor to Europe (1.547–550).

II§29 This “pseudo-Herodotean” chronology for dating the Capture of Troy in Vita 1 matches the chronology given by Herodotus himself, whose numbering of years converts to the date of 1270 BCE. [13] Likewise in Vita 1, the number of years converts to the date of 1270 BCE. So both Vita 1 and Herodotus are traditional, as it were, in their dating of the Capture of Troy. But the date given by Herodotus for Homer himself is by comparison idiosyncratic. Herodotus (2.53.1–3) says that Homer as well as Hesiod lived only around four hundred years before his own time. Such a calculation follows neither of the two traditional datings we have seen so far. At a later point, I will give further consideration to this idiosyncratic dating of Homer by Herodotus. For the moment, however, I simply review the two traditional Homeric datings we have seen so far, one of which is Athenocentric and the other non-Athenocentric. The Athenocentric dating of Homer, as we have seen, is most prominently represented by Aristarchus in Alexandria, who followed Eratosthenes in calculating the Ionian Migration and the birth of Homer at one hundred forty years after the Capture of Troy (Vita 3b 17–22). By contrast, the non-Athenocentric—and Aeolian—version is most prominently represented by Crates, head of the Library {141|142} in Pergamon, who dated Homer’s birth as happening before the Return of the Herakleidai, only some eighty years after the Capture of Troy (Vita 3b 21–23).

II 6ⓢ5. Homer the Aeolian

II§30 In the pre-Athenocentric narrative of Vita 1, not only Cyme but even Smyrna is still Aeolian. That is, Smyrna has not yet turned Ionian. Thus the birthplace of Homer is an Aeolian city, and Homer is an Aeolian by birth. In the Athenocentric narrative of Vita 2, by contrast, Homer is born in Smyrna when it is already Ionian, and so Homer is an Ionian by birth. To put it another way, we see here the Homer of a diminished Aeolian Dodecapolis who is becoming redefined as the Homer of an augmented Ionian Dodecapolis. At a later point, I will take a closer look at the concept of the Ionian Dodecapolis, a federation composed of twelve Ionian cities and complemented by additional Ionian cities like Smyrna. For now I focus on the rival federation of the Aeolian Dodecapolis and on the Aeolian island of Lesbos. Lesbos was politically organized as a federation of five cities, visualized by Strabo (13.2.1 C616) as a single unified state that claimed to be the metropolis or ‘mother city’ of the Aeolian cities on the Asiatic mainland. There is a comparable description in the “pseudo-Herodotean” Vita 1 of Homer: as we just saw, we read there that the cities on the island of Lesbos were the first Aeolian cities to be founded after the Capture of Troy. In that sense, Lesbos was the epicenter of the Aeolian Migration.

II§31 As we know from Thucydides, the federation of five cities on the island of Lesbos was dominated by one city in particular, Mytilene, as if all five cities had become united as a single unified city: the special political term for this union was sunoikisis (Thucydides 3.3.1). Accordingly, instead of specifying Mytilene or any of the other four cities that belonged to the federation of five cities in Lesbos (Mytilene, Methymna, Antissa, Eresos, Pyrrha), Thucydides generally refers to the whole island as if it were a single city-state, Lesbos, just as the island of Chios is conventionally equated with the city of Chios. In the work of Thucydides, we see the actual collocation of Khioi ‘Chiotes’ with Lesbioi ‘Lesbians’ (at 1.19 and 1.116.2, for example). A notable exception for Thucydides is the context at hand (3.1–3): here he focuses on a single Lesbian city, Methymna, which maintained its allegiance to Athens in the summer of 428 BCE when the rest of the sunoikisis of Lesbos revolted from the Athenian empire. The exception proves the rule: the island of Lesbos was dominated by the city of Mytilene, best known to classicists as the poetic setting of Alcaeus and Sappho.

II§32 Already in the earliest historical times that we can reconstruct for this part of the Greek-speaking world, in the late seventh century BCE, the control exercised by the city of Mytilene over the island of Lesbos and its mainland territories in Asia Minor was threatened by the city of Athens. The threat was intensified in the sixth century, in the era of the tyrants of Athens, the Peisistratidai. As we saw in Chapter {142|143} 1, a predemocratic Athenian empire was already evolving and expanding in the era of these tyrants, and a prime objective of their expansionism was the domination of the Ionian cities situated on the islands to the east and, farther east, on the coastline of Asia Minor. As we are now about to see, another prime objective was the domination of Aeolian cities farther to the north, which had been dominated up to that time by the Aeolian city of Mytilene. As we saw in Chapter 1, a vital aspect of Athenian imperial interests was the appropriation of Homer as a symbol of Ionian cultural identity. Now we are about to see another vital aspect, that is, the appropriation of Troy as a symbol of Aeolian cultural identity. As we will also see, the Athenians’ appropriation of an Aeolian Troy resulted in their appropriation of an Aeolian Homer as well.

II§33 The territory of Troy in northern Asia Minor had been inhabited by Aeolians—and dominated by the Mytilenaeans—until the Athenians took the spectacular initiative of attempting to occupy this territory. Such attempts started toward the end of the seventh century BCE. The choicest part of this territory was the city of Sigeion and its environs. The city had been built near the northern end of the heights known as the Sigeion Ridge, which extends along the Aegean coastline of Asia Minor overlooking the entrance to the Hellespont. The Sigeion Ridge, some ten kilometers in length, extends from the promontory at the Bay of Beşike in the south all the way to the promontory of Sigeion (Kum Kale) in the north. [14] Modern historians describe Sigeion as the first overseas possession of Athens; a close second was the city of Elaious on the European side of the Hellespont, facing Sigeion on the Asiatic side. [15] As we are about to see, the initiative of possessing Sigeion transcended the objectives of wealth and power. There was also the objective of prestige—the prestige of poetry. At stake was the poetic territory that was Troy, and the ideology underlying the prestige of this Iliadic space turns out to be relevant to some of the oldest recoverable phases of content in Homeric poetry.

II§34 As I said a moment ago, the city of Sigeion had been controlled by the Aeolian city of Mytilene in Lesbos before it was captured from the Mytilenaeans by Athens. The capture must be seen against the backdrop of a protracted war between Mytilene and Athens over the possession of Sigeion, and the city seems to have changed hands more than once in the course of this war. The general outlines of the ongoing conflict emerge from the accounts of Herodotus (5.94–95), Strabo (13.1.38–39 C599–600), and Diogenes Laertius (1.74). [16]

II§35 In these accounts, the earlier years of the war between Mytilene and Athens over Sigeion are dominated by such celebrated protagonists as Alcaeus of Mytilene, Pittakos of Mytilene, Phrynon of Athens, and Periander of Corinth, who can all be {143|144} dated to the late seventh and early sixth century BCE. In the poetry of Alcaeus as read by Herodotus, Sigeion is pictured as already belonging to Athens: Herodotus notes that Alcaeus himself says in his own poetry that his armor was captured from him by the Athenians in a battle against the Mytilenaeans, and that it was displayed by the enemy inside the Athēnaion ‘sacred space of Athena’ in Sigeion (5.95.1 τὰ δέ οἱ ὅπλα ἴσχουσι Ἀθηναῖοι καί σφεα ἀνεκρέμασαν πρὸς τὸ Ἀθήναιον τὸ ἐν Σιγείῳ). Strabo quotes the words of Alcaeus telling about the captured armor, and these words actually give the name of Athena’s sacred space as Glaukōpion (Alcaeus F 401B via Strabo 13.1.37 C600). This same name Glaukōpion, derived from the sacred epithet of Athena glaukōpis ‘having the looks of the owl’, is attested in Athens as well. There it applies to the sacred space of Athena Nike at the southwest corner of the acropolis (Callimachus F 238.11), and this space, like the Glaukōpion in Sigeion, can be dated as far back as 600 BCE. [17]

II§36 At some point during the ongoing war between Mytilene and Athens over Sigeion, this city and its environs must have reverted to Mytilene before reverting once again—and this time finally—to Athens. Herodotus specifies that Sigeion had to be recaptured from the Mytilenaeans by the Athenians under the leadership of Peisistratos, who installed his son Hegesistratos as the tyrant there (5.94.1). Herodotus goes out of his way to emphasize that this reversion of Sigeion from Mytilene to Athens in the era of Peisistratos was indeed final.

II§37 I leave it open whether the very first attempts to seize Sigeion from the Aeolians can be attributed to the Athenians specifically or, more generally, to the Ionians as represented especially by the city of Miletus, which claimed special ties to Athens as its notional mother city. [18] In any event, these early attempts in the seventh century BCE could be viewed retrospectively as a purely Athenian initiative in the later era of the Peisistratidai.

II§38 It is in this context that we must view the retrospective statement made by Herodotus (5.95.2) about an earlier time when the city of Sigeion had been taken away from Mytilene and awarded to Athens as the result of an arbitration conducted by the tyrant Periander of Corinth. From the overall narrative of Herodotus (5.94–95), we can see what was really at stake in the arbitrated dispute between the two cities over the possession of Sigeion—a dispute that continued all the way to the time when Peisistratos finally succeeded in securing permanent Athenian control over the city. In the course of describing the rival claims and counterclaims in this continuing dispute between Mytilene and Athens, Herodotus makes it clear that these {144|145} two cities equated the possession of the territory of Sigeion with the possession of the epic of the Trojan War. At stake was the poetic space of the Trojan War, to which Herodotus refers as hē Ilias khōra—simultaneously the territory of the epic of Troy (that is, of the Iliad) as well as the territory of the city of Troy (that is, of Ilion):

IIⓣ3 Herodotus 5.94.2

οἱ μὲν ἀπαιτέοντες τὴν χώρην, Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ οὔτε συγγινωσκόμενοι ἀποδεικνύντες τε λόγῳ οὐδὲν μᾶλλον Αἰολεῦσι μετεὸν τῆς ᾿Ιλιάδος χώρης ἢ οὐ καὶ σφίσι καὶ τοῖσι ἄλλοισι, ὅσοι Ἑλλήνων συνεπρήξαντο Μενέλεῳ τὰς Ἑλένης ἁρπαγάς.

They [= the Mytilenaeans] were demanding the return of the territory [khōra], but the Athenians rejected the demand, trying to demonstrate by way of what they said that the Aeolians were no more entitled to the Iliadic territory [khōra] than were they [= the Athenians] and all the other Hellenes who had joined forces in avenging Menelaos for the abduction of Helen.

II§39 As the wording of Herodotus makes clear, the city of Mytilene in Lesbos claimed to be representing all Aeolic-speaking Hellenes in claiming possession of the Iliadic territory of Sigeion in the Troad. By contrast, the city of Athens claimed to be representing all Hellenes who took part in the Trojan War. That is why the interpolation, as it were, of Athens into the Trojan War is vital for the Athenians. We saw it also in Vita 1 (1.379–384), where Homer inserts the role of Athens into his Iliad while he is composing it in Chios, getting ready for his big tour of the Helladic mainland—a tour that is meant to start with Athens as the first stop. We see it also in the inscriptions commemorating the victory of the Athenians led by Kimon against the Persians at Eion in 475, in which the Athenian hero Menestheus was glorified. [19] (The relevant verses glorifying Menestheus are quoted by Aeschines 3.185).

II§40 That the Aeolians equated Sigeion and its environs with ‘Iliadic territory’ is also evident from information dating back to the earlier Aeolian phase of Sigeion. As we read in Strabo (13.1.38 C599), the Mytilenaeans under the leadership of one Archeanax built the walls of the city of Sigeion from the stones of the ruined walls of the ancient city of Troy.

II§41 I highlight the importance of this piece of information, which is obscured by the overall argument that Strabo is trying to make. When Strabo (13.1.38 C599) reports that Aeolian Sigeion had been built from the stones of Troy, he thinks that this report actually validates his ongoing argument that the ancient city of Troy or Ilion was not the same thing as the new city of Ilion, the New Ilion. [20] In making this argument, Strabo says that he is following the antiquarian Demetrius of Scepsis, a grammatikos who lived in the era of Crates and Aristarchus, that is, in the second {145|146} century BCE. Demetrius denied any continuity between the old Ilion and the city of New Ilion as it existed in his own day, and Strabo follows him in claiming that there was no trace left of the old Ilion. Supposedly, all the stones of the old Ilion were used up in the process of building the walls of other cities like Sigeion. At a later point, I will argue that the motives underlying this claim can be traced back to Athenian imperial ambitions.

Footnotes

[ back ] 1. See Colbeaux 2005:226 on the research of Theagenes of Rhegium (DK B 2) concerning the patris ‘fatherland’ of Homer. West 2003a:309 notes in passing that Ios—not only Smyrna and Chios—figures as the home of Homer already in such sources as Simonides, Pindar, and Bacchylides.

[ back ] 2. How and Wells 1928 I 123–124.

[ back ] 3. West 2003a:310 translates Melēsigenēs as ‘caring about his clan’. I propose, however, that the component genos implies not ‘clan’ but ‘genealogy’ in the sense of finding out about origins.

[ back ] 4. PH 12§22 (= pp. 347–348).

[ back ] 5. The locating of Aeolian Cyme as a point of transition from Aeolian to Ionian phases of Homer in Vita 1 may be relevant to a story we find embedded in the Hesiodic Works and Days: according to this story, the father of Hesiod emigrated from the mainland of Hellas to the city of Cyme on the mainland of Asia Minor—only to emigrate back to the mainland of Hellas. I propose that this story is an aetiology accounting for the fact that the diction of Hesiodic poetry is Ionic, not Aeolic.

[ back ] 6. Herodotus 1.147.2 adds that the Ionian cities of Ephesus and Colophon are exceptional in not celebrating the festival of Apatouria.

[ back ] 7. Frame 2009 §4.7n19 dates the refounding of Smyrna somewhere between the late fourth and early third centuries BCE.

[ back ] 8. In this context, Vita 2 (14–15) refers to the Homēridai as surviving descendants of Homer in Chios. More later on the Homēridai as described in Vita 2.

[ back ] 9. The main claim of Colophon for possession of Homer is the Margites, which is supposedly Homer’s first composition (Vita 2.17).

[ back ] 10. The persona of Peisistratos, in an epigram (Vita 4.11–16 = Vita 5.29–34 = Greek Anthology 11.442), claims that the Athenians even founded Smyrna: εἴπερ ᾿Αθηναῖοι Σμύρναν ἐπῳκίσαμεν (Vita 4.16 = Vita 5.34). At a later point, I will argue that there are two phases involved in the Athenian imperial appropriation of Homer: an earlier phase, where Smyrna is the focus of Athenian claims, and a later phase, where Chios, as the home of the Homēridai, becomes the centerpiece of Homeric poetry.

[ back ] 11. I have already noted a case where the reporting of a Cymaean usage of homēroi as referring to blind people in Vita 1.164–165 is redefined in terms of a Cymaean and Ionic usage in Vita 3a.23. For another example of a recessive Cymaean tradition embedded within a predominantly Ionian context, see Vita 1.286–287. Also, the narrative of Vita 1 goes out of its way to emphasize the unimportance of Cyme in the shaping of Homer’s repertoire: at the end of his visit to Cyme, Homer curses the Cymaeans, praying that their city should never produce an accomplished poet (Vita 1.190–192).

[ back ] 12. As we have seen, the story of Homer’s conception in Ios was accepted by Aristotle (F 76 ed. Rose, via Vitae 3a.25–26, 3b.10, and 6.13–14). The same island of Ios, as we have also seen, is commonly figured as the place of Homer’s death.

[ back ] 13. Graziosi 2002:99.

[ back ] 14. Cook 1984:167.

[ back ] 15. Cook 1973:178–188; Rose 2006:141; Erskine 2001:107–108; Hall 1997:42–44.

[ back ] 16. Aloni 2006:87–92. See also Antonelli 2000.

[ back ] 17. Robertson 1996:70n55. Also Frame 2009 §3.74. See also Rose 2006:142–143 on the temple of Athena at Assos, which was similar in its Doric architecture to the temple of Athena at Sigeion.

[ back ] 18. On the special ties between Athens as mother city and Miletus as daughter city, I refer to the work of Frame 2009 ch. 10.

[ back ] 19. Dué 2006:98–99; on the role of the Athenian hero Menestheus in the Iliad, see Dué pp. 92–95.

[ back ] 20. For a historical and archaeological overview of the New Ilion, see Rose 2006.

II 6ⓢ3. An Athenocentric Life of Homer

II 6ⓢ4. An Aeolian dating of Homer

II 6ⓢ5. Homer the Aeolian

Footnotes

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Homer the Preclassic

Chapter Six: Variations on a theme of Homer

II 6ⓢ1. Rival datings of Homer

II 6ⓢ2. A pre-Athenocentric Life of Homer

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