Homeric Age Research Articles

The Women's Quarters in the Palace of Odysseus

PROFESSOR J. L. Myres in J.H.S. XX. 136 put forward the view that the women's quarters in the Palace of Odysseus formed a structure separate from the men's pe'hapov. Seymour, in his Life in the Homeric Age (pp. 197-8), objects to this view on the ground that the evidence for it is insufficient. Yet Myres' case is quite a strong one and could be added to by an intelligent reader of Odyssey, XXII. 381401, and it seems to me that the precise significance of one epithet may be held to decide the matter. In three references to the women's

Book Review: Life in the Homeric Age

Book Review: Life in the Homeric Age

The Study of Homeric Religion

The study of religion cannot well be disassociated from the study of society in general. Scarcely another factor in societal life is so, all-pervasive in its influence as is the system of beliefs that develop out of man's relations with his imaginary environment; no religion can be studied to much purpose apart from the scrutiny of its setting in the general societal order. Further, a good many of the points upon which I shall touch apply just as aptly to the general study of Homer as they do to the specific topic of religion. These considerations must serve as an apology, if one is thought to be needed, for the fact that this essay seems, largely to ignore the precise theme set before it. What I have found myself writing -after the end is reached and the time has come to think of a beginning-is a series of reflections upon the study of Homer, chiefly with reference to, religion, and never, I trust, without some evident applicability to it. It should also be said, by way of preliminary, that evidence, so far as this essay is concerned, means the evidence of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The whole matter of the timerelation as between the data of classical archaeology and those of the epics is dubious enough to give the discreet layman pause. And the Homeric Age of the poems is a sufficiently rich and definite culture-epoch to reward any effort that sociologists may choose to put upon it. There are a number of reasons why the study of Homer is profitable to the real scientist whose interest lies in the life and evolution of human society-and it is, in any case, an enticing study by reason of the character of its materials. Perhaps it is a little outside of the scientific order to reveal a weakness for data presented in attractive form; but if the mood of the investi-

The Use and Effect of Attic Seals

Previous articleNext article FreeThe Use and Effect of Attic SealsRobert J. BonnerRobert J. Bonner Search for more articles by this author PDF Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Classical Philology Volume 3, Number 4Oct., 1908 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/359216 Views: 40 Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Nicolas Siron La jeune fille au héron. Genre et érotique dans l’iconographie grecque (VIe-IVe siècle avant J.-C.), Clio , no.4242 (Dec 2015): 217–242.https://doi.org/10.4000/clio.12829Rachel Meyers Seals, Greece, (Oct 2012).https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah06289VERITY PLATT MAKING AN IMPRESSION: REPLICATION AND THE ONTOLOGY OF THE GRAECO-ROMAN SEAL STONE, Art History 29, no.22 (Apr 2006): 233–257.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8365.2006.00500.x

Two Books about Homer—A Contrast - Life in the Homeric Age. By ProfessorT. D. Seymour. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1907. Demy 8vo. 1 vol. xvi + 704. 2 maps. 5 plates and 37 cuts. 17s. net. - Rise of the Greek Epic. By Gilbert Murray, M.A., LL.D., Fellow of New College, Oxford. OxfordClarendon Press, 1907. Demy 8vo. 1 vol.

Two Books about Homer—A Contrast - Life in the Homeric Age. By ProfessorT. D. Seymour. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1907. Demy 8vo. 1 vol. xvi + 704. 2 maps. 5 plates and 37 cuts. 17<i>s</i>. net. - Rise of the Greek Epic. By Gilbert Murray, M.A., LL.D., Fellow of New College, Oxford. OxfordClarendon Press, 1907. Demy 8vo. 1 vol.

&lt;italic&gt;Life in the Homeric Age&lt;/italic&gt;. By &lt;sc&gt;Thomas Day Seymour&lt;/sc&gt;, Hillhouse Professor of the Greek Language and Literature in Yale University. (New York and London: The Macmillan Company. 1907. Pp. xvi, 704.)

Journal Article Life in the Homeric Age. By Thomas Day Seymour, Hillhouse Professor of the Greek Language and Literature in Yale University. (New York and London: The Macmillan Company. 1907. Pp. xvi, 704.) Get access Life in the Homeric Age. By Seymour Thomas Day, Hillhouse Professor of the Greek Language and Literature in Yale University. (New York and London: The Macmillan Company. 1907. Pp. xvi, 704.) J. Irving Manatt J. Irving Manatt Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 13, Issue 3, April 1908, Pages 558–561, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/13.3.558 Published: 01 April 1908

Reviews: A Disciple of Le Play: “The Growth of Modern Nations: A History of the Particularist Form of Society.”, Eugenics: “Noteworthy Families.”, “Social Democracy and Population.”, “The Scope and Importance to the State of the Science of National Eugenics.”, “Probability: The Foundation of Eugenics.”, “An Introduction to the Theory of Mental and Social Measurements.”, “The Rise of the Greek Epic.”,

Reviews: A Disciple of Le Play: “The Growth of Modern Nations: A History of the Particularist Form of Society.”, Eugenics: “Noteworthy Families.”, “Social Democracy and Population.”, “The Scope and Importance to the State of the Science of National Eugenics.”, “Probability: The Foundation of Eugenics.”, “An Introduction to the Theory of Mental and Social Measurements.”, “The Rise of the Greek Epic.”,

Life in the Homeric Age

Life in the Homeric Age

Life in the Homeric Age

Life in the Homeric Age

Homer and His Age

Homer and His Age

Homer and His Age (Concluded)

Homer and His Age (Concluded)

Book Review: Life in the Homeric Age

Book Review: Life in the Homeric Age

Homer and His Age

Homer and His Age

Homer and His Age

Homer and His Age

On the Plan of the Homeric House, with Special Reference to Mykenaian Analogies

The object of this paper is to examine some of the arguments which have been used to support current reconstructions of the Homeric House, and in particular of the House of Odysseus, as it is described in the Odyssey; and to add a few points of interpretation and of criticism which I have not succeeded in finding already in print. In order to make these latter intelligible, it will be necessary to recapitulate much that has been stated by previous writers on a subject which is ‘always with us’; and not a little that has been established with some degree of certainty. It is perhaps necessary also to add, that the interpretation which I propose is intended to apply, almost without exception, to the Homeric poems in their present state; and to determine the domestic architecture and domestic habits which were familiar both to rhapsodists and to their audiences at the time when the poems, and the ‘Vengeance of Odysseus’ in particular, were being reduced to the form in which, with but slight aberrations, they have survived. It is difficult to believe that men who were endowed with so keen a visualizing faculty as the rhapsodists and their patrons really tolerated unintelligible archaism in the domestic topography of their ballads; and we may fairly assume that the movements of the personages implicated in the ‘Vengeance,’ into and out of the House of Odysseus, were still intelligible, and even familiar, to both singers and listeners. That this was so in the Homeric Age, and that anachronisms in the description were currently corrected, as one custom and another became obsolete in daily life, is made very probable, if not certain, by the analogous case of Homeric armour; where, as Dr. Reichel has argued in his Homerische Waffen, the introduction of the θώρηξ and the consequent changes of drill and fence, are reflected in the poems by interpolated passages, introduced by θώρηξwearing rhapsodists to meet the critisisms of a θώρηξwearing public.

Iron in Homer

Iron is mentioned in the following passages of Homer (ὅστις ποτ᾿ ἐστίν, εἰ τόδ᾿ αὐτῷ φίλον κεκλημένῳ, τοῦτό νιν προσεννέπω), and in these passages only:—Δ 123, 485, 510; Ε 723; Ζ 48; Η 141, 144, 473; Θ 15; Ι 366; Κ 379; Λ 133; Ρ 424; Σ 34; Υ 372; Χ 357; Ψ 30, 177, 261, 834, 851; Ω 205, 521; a 184, 204; δ 293; ε 191; ι 393; μ 280; ξ 324; ο 329; π 294; ρ 565; τ 13, 211, 494, 587; φ 3, 10, 61, 81, 97, 114, 127, 328; ψ 172; ω 168, 177.These passages form a basis for discussing two interesting and important points in the Homeric question: (1) whether Homer's acquaintance with iron differs so much in different books that we must believe those books to belong to different ages; and (2) whether iron plays such different parts in Homer and in Mycenae that we cannot believe the Homeric age to be coincident with the Mycenaean period.

The Homeric Land System

The object of the following pages, the substance of which was read before the Cambridge Branch of the Hellenic Society in 1883, is to examine into the true nature of the land-system of the Greeks of the Homeric age by means of the evidence contained in the poems themselves.On à priori grounds we might have expected, or at least should not be surprised, to find in the Iliad and Odyssey some traces of that primitive system known as the ‘Open-Field’ or ‘Common-Field’ system of agriculture, which the researches of recent years have proved to have once prevailed over a great part of the earth, and of which many survivals still exist.

The Palaces of Homer

It is much to be regretted that the invaluable researches of Schliemann, which have done so much to illuminate many fields of Homeric archaeology, help us but little in our reconstruction of the houses of Homeric chiefs. Both at Hissarlik and at Mycenae that indefatigable explorer laid bare the foundations or substructions of houses, large in comparison with those which surrounded them, which must probably have belonged to chiefs or kings. But the dwelling at Hissarlik belonged to a far ruder city than that of Homer, and in the foundations of walls near the Agora of Mycenae no clear plan can be made out. So it is also at Ithaca. Gell's description of the plan of the palace of Odysseus, a plan which he professed to be based on still existing remains on Mount Aetos in Ithaca, rests, as is now well known, on nothing but invention and imagination. Schliemann found indeed on the summit of that hill a small level platform of triangular form, which he conjectures to have been originally in size some 166 feet by 127 feet, and surrounded by a massive circuit-wall. And within the circuit he found remnants of six or seven Cyclopean buildings, which may have been chambers of one house. But there is nothing to lead us to suppose that these buildings belonged to the Homeric age; therefore for a restoration of the palace of that age they afford little or no material.