Otkrivanje homerovskog koda / Discovering the Homeric code

Abstract

From the late Archaic period of Hellenic history to modern times, a large number of papers, studies, and books dealing with the Iliad and the Odyssey have been published. One reason for this is that Homer’s epics offer so many opportunities for exploration. This was also the motivation for writing this paper which deals with the question of the appearance of Thersites in the Iliad. Thersites appears in only one episode, with unusual speech and behavior in relation to what other characters in the epic say and do. This conspicuous and unique appearance of his must have been the result of a certain hidden desire of the author of the Iliad himself. It is possible that in fact Thersites in this case served as a kind of alter ego of the author who sought to conceal, within the aristocratic and elitist milieu for which the epic itself was made, in a very skillful way his real opinion of the Trojan War and the aristocracy. Thersites and his rage could also represent a kind of hidden Homeric code, of which there may be several more in the Iliad.