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92-545: There are seven significant islands: Lipari , Vulcano , Salina , Stromboli , Filicudi , Alicudi and Panarea , and a set of minor islands and rocks. The Aeolian Islands are 30 to 80 kilometres (19 to 50 mi) off the north coast of Sicily in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Vulcano is located closest to the Sicilian coast. Lipari and Salina follow to the north, Filicudi and Alicudi to the west, and Panarea and Stromboli to

184-575: A World Heritage Site for providing "an outstanding record of volcanic island-building and destruction, and ongoing volcanic phenomena". Status as a World Heritage Site was threatened by Italy's failure to close the pumice quarry as well as its failure to prevent the building of 4 new harbours. However, as of 2020, it is still listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site. Lipari 38°30′06″N 14°56′01″E  /  38.50167°N 14.93361°E  / 38.50167; 14.93361 Lipari ( Italian: [ˈliːpari] ; Sicilian : Lìpari )

276-453: A canonical text. The first printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in Milan, Italy by Demetrios Chalkokondyles . Today scholars use medieval manuscripts, papyri and other sources; some argue for a "multi-text" view, rather than seeking a single definitive text. The nineteenth-century edition of Arthur Ludwich mainly follows Aristarchus's work, whereas van Thiel's (1991, 1996) follows

368-610: A clear overall design and that they are not merely strung together from unrelated songs. It is also generally agreed that each poem was composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions. Nearly all scholars agree that the Doloneia in Book X of the Iliad is not part of the original poem, but rather a later insertion by a different poet. Some ancient scholars believed Homer to have been an eyewitness to

460-531: A discredited dead end. Starting in around 1928, Milman Parry and Albert Lord , after their studies of folk bards in the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" that the Homeric poems were originally composed through improvised oral performances, which relied on traditional epithets and poetic formulas. This theory found very wide scholarly acceptance and explained many previously puzzling features of

552-461: A huge outdoor terrace, usually shaded by grape and flowering vines. In Homer 's epic poem, the Odyssey , Aeolus , son of Hippotes , was the divine keeper of the winds and king of the mythical, floating island of Aeolia. He kept the violent winds locked safely away inside the interior of his isle, releasing them only at the command of greatest gods to wreak devastation upon the world. The hero of

644-415: A phrase or idea is repeated at both the beginning and end of a story, or a series of such ideas first appears in the order A, B, C ... before being reversed as ... C, B, A) has been observed in the Homeric epics. Opinion differs as to whether these occurrences are a conscious artistic device, a mnemonic aid or a spontaneous feature of human storytelling. Both of the Homeric poems begin with an invocation to

736-734: A rumour appeared in international newspapers that the Aeolian Islands had been "swallowed up by the sea" during a time of volcanic activity. While communication with the islands was interrupted for a time, they were not otherwise inconvenienced. During World War II , all of the Aeolian Islands were captured by the Allies in August 1943, during the invasion of Sicily . The islands were then extensively searched by archeologists Madeleine Cavalier and Luigi Bernabò Brea after World War II . The Aeolian Islands were listed by UNESCO in 2000 as

828-622: Is Panarea. The highest elevation of the Lipari Islands is Monte Fossa delle Felci  [ it ] on Salina, which reaches a height of 962 m (3,156 ft). The seven Aeolian Islands, covering an area of 1,600 km (620 sq mi), originated in the Tyrrhenian Basin , a great plain at the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Sea . Emissions of lava from depths of up to 3,600 m (11,800 ft) resulted in

920-607: Is a comune including six of seven islands of the Aeolian Islands (Lipari, Vulcano , Panarea , Stromboli , Filicudi and Alicudi ) and it is located in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the northern coast of Sicily , Southern Italy ; it is administratively part of the Metropolitan City of Messina . Its population is 12,821, but during the May to September tourist season, the total population may reach up to 20,000. It

1012-555: Is almost due west across the island, Quattropani in the northwest, Acquacalda along the northern coast, whereas Canneto is on the eastern shore north of Lipari town. The highest point on the island is Monte Chirica at 602 m (1975 ft). Geologists agree on the fact that Lipari (island) was created by a succession of four volcanic movements, the most extensive of which was the third one, presumably lasting from 20,000 BC to 13,000 BC. A further vast phenomenon should have happened around 9000 BC. The last recorded eruptions occurred in

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1104-429: Is also the name of the biggest island in the archipelago, where the main urban area of the comune is located. Lipari Island is the largest of a chain of islands in a volcanic archipelago situated in between Vesuvius and Etna . The island has a surface area of 89.72 km and is 30 km from Sicily. Besides the main town, most of the year-round population resides in one of the four main villages: Pianoconte

1196-566: Is called parataxis . The so-called ' type scenes ' ( typische Szenen ), were named by Walter Arend in 1933. He noted that Homer often, when describing frequently recurring activities such as eating, praying , fighting and dressing, used blocks of set phrases in sequence that were then elaborated by the poet. The 'Analyst' school had considered these repetitions as un-Homeric, whereas Arend interpreted them philosophically. Parry and Lord noted that these conventions are found in many other cultures. 'Ring composition' or chiastic structure (when

1288-618: Is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey , two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature . Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history. Homer's Iliad centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War . The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus , king of Ithaca , back to his home after

1380-604: Is fundamentally based on Ionic Greek , in keeping with the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests that the Iliad was composed slightly before the Odyssey and that Homeric formulae preserve features older than other parts of the poems. The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter ; ancient Greek metre was quantity-based rather than stress-based. Homer frequently uses set phrases such as epithets ('crafty Odysseus ', 'rosy-fingered Dawn ', 'owl-eyed Athena ', etc.), Homeric formulae ('and then answered [him/her], Agamemnon, king of men', 'when

1472-534: Is said around 9,000 of the 10,000 citizens of Lipari were captured and enslaved although a couple of more recent scholars have questioned this number arguing for a lower population at the time of Barbarossa. A number of citizens were ransomed in Messina and returned to the islands but most of those captured never returned. Only after the tragedy did the Spanish authorities turn their attention to Lipari and repopulate

1564-505: The Capture of Oechalia , and the Phocais . These claims are not considered authentic today and were not universally accepted in the ancient world. As with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they indicate little more than the centrality of Homer to ancient Greek culture. Some ancient accounts about Homer were established early and repeated often. They include that Homer

1656-828: The Angevins , and then the Aragonese , until Carlos I , the Aragonese King, became the Spanish King, and was then quickly crowned Holy Roman Emperor Charles V . In 1544, Hayreddin Barbarossa , together with the French fleet of Captain Polin under a Franco-Ottoman alliance , ransacked Lipari and enslaved the entire population. Jérôme Maurand lamented about the depredation to his Christian fellow men during

1748-603: The Byzantine Empire . According to a Christian legend, in 264 a coffin which contained the body of Bartholomew washed up on the beach of Lipari, with the result that Bartholomew was immediately elected the patron saint of the Aeolian Islands. In 836 the Aghlabids of Ziyadat Allah I of Ifriqiya sacked Lipari, massacred most of the population, enslaved the survivors and annexed the Liparian Islands into

1840-865: The Carthaginians against Rome during the Punic Wars . Although the Battle of the Lipari Islands in 260 BC led to a Carthaginian victory, the Romans later sacked Lipari and their domination led to a period of poverty. At the fall of the Western Roman Empire , the Aeolian Islands came under the sway of the Visigoths , the Vandals and the Ostrogoths , followed by the domination of

1932-641: The Emirate of Sicily . The Norman conquest of Sicily from the Emirate of Sicily in 1061 resulted in the annexation of the islands. Roger II of Sicily sent the Benedictine monks to Lipari , which gave rise to considerable development on the islands. A cathedral dedicated to Saint Bartholomew was built, as well as the Benedictine monastery in the castle. In 1208 Frederick II of Swabia acceded to

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2024-541: The Etruscans for control of the Tyrrhenian Sea . The town was initially concentrated upon the summit of the rock which played the role of acropolis, seat of religious cults and of public life, but in the course of the first century of its existence, an increase in the population necessitated an expansion into the area at the foot of the rocky slopes and on to the top of the Civita hill. A first city wall, built sometime in

2116-573: The Iliad alone is massive, sprawling over nearly 4,000 oversized pages in a 21st-century printed version and his commentary on the Odyssey an additional nearly 2,000. In 1488, the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published in Florence the editio princeps of the Homeric poems. The earliest modern Homeric scholars started with the same basic approaches towards the Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity. The allegorical interpretation of

2208-844: The Iliad and the Odyssey are associated with the name "Homer". In antiquity, a large number of other works were sometimes attributed to him, including the Homeric Hymns , the Contest of Homer and Hesiod , several epigrams , the Little Iliad , the Nostoi , the Thebaid , the Cypria , the Epigoni , the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog–Mouse War"), the Margites ,

2300-443: The Iliad and the Odyssey in the sixth century BC by literate authors. After being written down, Wolf maintained that the two poems were extensively edited, modernized, and eventually shaped into their present state as artistic unities. Wolf and the "Analyst" school, which led the field in the nineteenth century, sought to recover the original, authentic poems which were thought to be concealed by later excrescences. Within

2392-462: The Muse . In the Iliad , the poet beseeches her to sing of "the anger of Achilles", and in the Odyssey , he asks her to tell of "the man of many ways". A similar opening was later employed by Virgil in his Aeneid . The orally transmitted Homeric poems were put into written form at some point between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to a scribe by

2484-639: The Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. As a result of the poems' prominence in classical Greek education, extensive commentaries on them developed to explain parts that were culturally or linguistically difficult. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many interpreters, especially the Stoics , who believed that Homeric poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, regarded them as allegories, containing hidden wisdom. Perhaps partially because of

2576-574: The Odyssey in which Telemachus went in search of news of his father not to Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Crete, in which Telemachus met up with his father in Crete and conspired with him to return to Ithaca disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, and in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier in the narrative and conspired with him in the destruction of the suitors. Most contemporary scholars, although they disagree on other questions about

2668-532: The Roman Empire it was a place of retreat and exile and was enjoyed because of its thermal baths using natural springs. The Emperor Caracalla sent his wife, Fulvia Plautilla , and her brother, Plautius, into exile here for the rest of their lives. Many objects recovered from old wrecks are now in the Aeolian Museum of Lipari. Lipari was probably an episcopal see from the 3rd century onward, with

2760-427: The Trojan War ; others thought he had lived up to 500 years afterwards. Contemporary scholars continue to debate the date of the poems. A long history of oral transmission lies behind the composition of the poems, complicating the search for a precise date. At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed a date for both poems to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics. Barry B. Powell dates

2852-426: The fascist , Croatian nationalist Ustaše movement. They islands were then extensively searched by archeologists Madeleine Cavalier and Luigi Bernabò Brea after World War II . Homer This is an accepted version of this page Homer ( / ˈ h oʊ m ər / ; Ancient Greek : Ὅμηρος [hómɛːros] , Hómēros ; born c.  8th century BCE ) was an Ancient Greek poet who

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2944-497: The polis entered a three-way alliance which included Dionysios' new colony at Tyndaris . Lipara prospered, but in 304 BC Agathokles took the town by treachery and is said to have lost all of his pillage from it in a storm at sea. Lipara became a Carthaginian naval base during the first Punic War , but fell to Roman forces in 252–251 BC. It was occupied by Agrippa in Octavian 's campaign against Sextus Pompeius . Under

3036-533: The 5th century AD when airborne pumice , together with volcanic ash , covered the Roman villages of the island. The volcanoes are considered active, and steaming fumaroles and hydrothermal activity may still be seen. As a result of its volcanic origin, the island is covered with pumice and obsidian . Pumice mining has become a large industry on Lipari, and the pale pumice from Lipari is shipped worldwide. In Neolithic times Lipari was, much like Sardinia , one of

3128-400: The 5th century BC was erected along outcrops at the bottom of the slopes of the rock, leaving outside the modern district of Diana, which was destined from the beginning to accommodate the city necropolis. A second city wall was built in the 4th century BC to enclose the new residential area bounded to the north and south by the river-beds of Santa Lucia and Ponte, which in ancient times ran into

3220-528: The Aeolian Islands were occupied by the Ausones led by Liparus . Liparus was succeeded by Aeolus whose house, according to the Odyssey by Homer , gave hospitality to Odysseus . In 580 BC, Greeks exiled from Rhodes and Knidos landed at Lipari and began a period of Greek domination , which was known for acts of piracy against Etruscan and Phoenician shipping. There was production of vases and other ceramics . The islanders were allies of

3312-420: The Aeolian Islands were visited by Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria —a friend of the islands and also a man with a profound knowledge of the archipelago. Between the years 1893–96 he published a work of eight volumes on the Aeolian Islands. In August 1888, the crater named Fossa on Vulcano erupted and caused many deaths in the sulphur mines . The eruptions continued for 19 months. On New Year's Day in 1909,

3404-545: The Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held that the Iliad and the Odyssey were put together from a large number of short, independent songs, and proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held that Homer had originally composed shorter versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey , which later poets expanded and revised. A small group of scholars opposed to the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw

3496-800: The Bronze Age Aegean civilisation , which in many ways resembles the ancient Near East more than the society described by Homer. Some aspects of the Homeric world are simply made up; for instance, the Iliad 22.145–56 describes there being two springs that run near the city of Troy, one that runs steaming hot and the other that runs icy cold. It is here that Hector takes his final stand against Achilles. Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence that springs of this description ever actually existed. The Homeric epics are written in an artificial literary language or 'Kunstsprache' only used in epic hexameter poetry. Homeric Greek shows features of multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but

3588-594: The Eurasian plate generates magma , which rises to the surface to form the volcanoes . The "Aeolian Arc" extends for more than 140 km (87 mi). It is a section of a larger area of geological instability across the Mediterranean region, caused by the collision of Africa and Europe , which includes Sicily , Calabria , and Campania together with Greece and the Aegean islands . The islands form part of

3680-500: The Form of an epic Poem till Pisistratus ' time, about 500 Years after." Friedrich August Wolf 's Prolegomena ad Homerum , published in 1795, argued that much of the material later incorporated into the Iliad and the Odyssey was originally composed in the tenth century BC in the form of short, separate oral songs, which passed through oral tradition for roughly four hundred years before being assembled into prototypical versions of

3772-550: The French fleet without resistance, and in return obtained various commercial and fiscal benefits. In the mid-15th century, Naples and Palermo united into the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies under the crown of Alfonso V of Aragon . On June 30, 1544, a fleet of 180 Ottoman vessels under the command of the corsair Hayreddin Barbarossa occupied Lipari and laid siege to the castle. The defenders surrendered. Historically, it

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3864-424: The Homeric poems also contain instances of comedy and laughter . Homer's epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor. To Plato , Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" ( τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν , tēn Helláda pepaídeuken ). In Dante Alighieri 's Divine Comedy , Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets; in

3956-476: The Homeric poems that had been so prevalent in antiquity returned to become the prevailing view of the Renaissance . Renaissance humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise poet, whose writings contain hidden wisdom, disguised through allegory. In western Europe during the Renaissance , Virgil was more widely read than Homer and Homer was often seen through a Virgilian lens. In 1664, contradicting

4048-433: The Homeric poems' extensive use in education, many authors believed that Homer's original purpose had been to educate. Homer's wisdom became so widely praised that he began to acquire the image of almost a prototypical philosopher. Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius of Thessalonica and John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions and scholia to Homer, especially in the twelfth century. Eustathius's commentary on

4140-563: The Homeric poems, including their unusually archaic language, their extensive use of stock epithets, and their other "repetitive" features. Many scholars concluded that the "Homeric Question" had finally been answered. Meanwhile, the 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge the gap between the 'Analysts' and 'Unitarians'. The Neoanalysts sought to trace the relationships between the Homeric poems and other epic poems, which have now been lost, but of which modern scholars do possess some patchy knowledge. Neoanalysts hold that knowledge of earlier versions of

4232-658: The Sicilian province of Messina . All the islands except Salina comprise the commune of Lipari within that province; Salina forms three separate communes: Malfa , Leni and Santa Marina Salina . Curbing urban development has been a key in preserving the Aeolian islands in a natural state. New buildings are severely restricted. Existing residences can be bought and restored but they must be constructed to resemble its whitewashed houses. Traditional houses consist of modular cubes constructed from indigenous building materials like stone, lava, pumice, and tufo. Almost all houses have

4324-483: The acropolis dating from the 18th c. BC and underlying the ancient Roman town. In the 13th century BC, the islands were settled by Ausinian peoples from the coasts of Campania , who introduced the myth of King Liparus from whom the town’s name derives. In the Mycenaean Period, Lipari has yielded pottery from LHI to LHIII . Lipari's continuous occupation may have been interrupted violently when in

4416-431: The campaign at Lipari: "To see so many poor Christians, and especially so many little boys and girls [enslaved] caused a very great pity." He also mentioned "the tears, wailings and cries of these poor Lipariotes, the father regarding his son and the mother her daughter... weeping while leaving their own city in order to be brought into slavery by those dogs who seemed like rapacious wolves amidst timid lambs". A number of

4508-474: The citizens were ransomed in Messina and eventually returned to the islands. Charles V then had his Spanish subjects repopulate the island and build the massive city walls atop the walls of the ancient Greek acropolis in 1556. The walls created a mighty fortress still standing today. The acropolis, high above the main town, was a safe haven for the populace in the event of a raid. While these walls protected

4600-473: The city with Sicilian, Calabrian and Spanish families. The city walls and houses were rebuilt and an Aeolian fleet was constructed which was able to successfully defend the Tyrrhenian Sea from the Ottomans. In 1693, an earthquake destroyed all the towns in eastern Sicily, causing around 60,000 deaths. After the population invoked the protection of Saint Bartholomew during prayers in the cathedral , there

4692-482: The composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey to sometime between 800 and 750 BC, based on the statement from Herodotus , who lived in the late fifth century BC, that Homer lived four hundred years before his own time "and not more" ( καὶ οὐ πλέοσι ) and on the fact that the poems do not mention hoplite battle tactics, inhumation , or literacy. Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes

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4784-544: The days of the Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste (daughter of Nestor ) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus ) were the parents of Homer. The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the Life of Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod . In the early fourth century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional account of a poetry contest at Chalcis with both Homer and Hesiod . Homer

4876-545: The divisions back further to the Classical period. Very few credit Homer himself with the divisions. In antiquity, it was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the late sixth century BCE by Pisistratus (died 528/7 BCE), in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension". The idea that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and first written down during

4968-479: The early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light', 'thus he/she spoke'), simile , type scenes, ring composition and repetition. These habits aid the extemporizing bard, and are characteristic of oral poetry. For instance, the main words of a Homeric sentence are generally placed towards the beginning, whereas literate poets like Virgil or Milton use longer and more complicated syntactical structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique

5060-532: The epic poem, Odysseus , on his travels to return home from Troy , visited Aiolos' isle and was entrusted with a bag containing all of the winds to ensure a safe voyage home. However, during the trip, the hero's companions opened the bag and the escaping winds carried their ship all the way back to Aiolos' shore. The first evidence of Sicilian migration was in Lipari ( Castellaro Vecchio culture  [ it ] ). The manufacture and commerce of obsidian objects

5152-511: The epics can be derived from anomalies of structure and detail in the surviving versions of the Iliad and Odyssey . These anomalies point to earlier versions of the Iliad in which Ajax played a more prominent role, in which the Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different characters, and in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They point to earlier versions of

5244-620: The fall of Troy. The epics depict man's struggle, the Odyssey especially so as Odysseus perseveres through punishment of the gods. The poems are in Homeric Greek , also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally . Despite being predominantly known for its tragic and serious themes,

5336-411: The few centres of trading in obsidian , a hard black volcanic glass prized by Neolithic peoples for the extremely sharp cutting edges that can be obtained. Lipari's history is rich in incidents as witnessed by the recent retrievals of several necropoli and other archaeological sites. Humans seem to have inhabited the island already in 5000 BC, though a local legend gives the eponymous name Liparus to

5428-572: The first bishop being St. Agatone, who, according to tradition, had found the sacred remains in his cathedral. The presence of the relics has been attested since at least 546. In the 9th century, Sicily was conquered by the Arabs , and soon Saracen pirates began to raid across the Tyrrhenian Sea , with dramatic effects for Lipari. In 839 the Saracens slaughtered much of the population, the relics of St. Bartholomew were moved to Benevento , and Lipari

5520-410: The formation of the Aeolian Islands, together with Ustica and a series of submarine volcanoes named Magnani, Vavilov, Marsili and Palinuro , as well as two that are unnamed. The present shape of the Aeolian Islands is the result of volcanic activity over a period of 260,000 years. There are two active volcanoes – Stromboli and Vulcano . Steaming fumaroles and thermal waters are on most of

5612-432: The genesis of the poems, agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not produced by the same author, based on "the many differences of narrative manner, theology, ethics, vocabulary, and geographical perspective, and by the apparently imitative character of certain passages of the Odyssey in relation to the Iliad ." Nearly all scholars agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey are unified poems, in that each poem shows

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5704-468: The islands. The volcanic activity has also left the islands with a very fertile soil that is beneficial in the growth of natural flora . Geologically the archipelago is defined as a volcanic arc . The origin of the Aeolian Islands is due to movement of the Earth's crust as a result of plate tectonics . The African continental shelf is in constant movement towards Europe . Its subduction underneath

5796-434: The judge awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who praised husbandry , he said, was greater than the one who told tales of battles and slaughter. The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity. Nonetheless, the aims of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia. The earliest preserved comments on Homer concern his treatment of the gods, which hostile critics such as

5888-545: The late 9th century BC an Ausonian civilization site was burned and apparently not rebuilt. Many household objects have been retrieved from the charred site. Greek colonists from Knidos arrived at Lipara ~580 BC after their first colonization attempt in Sicily failed and their leader, Pentathlos, was killed. They settled on the site of the village now known as Castello in Magna Graecia . The colony successfully fought

5980-535: The later Iron Age during which they were composed; yet the same heroes are cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than buried (as they were in the Bronze Age). In some parts of the Homeric poems, heroes are described as carrying large shields like those used by warriors during the Mycenaean period , but, in other places, they are instead described carrying the smaller shields that were commonly used during

6072-536: The later additions as superior, the work of a single inspired poet. By around 1830, the central preoccupations of Homeric scholars, dealing with whether or not "Homer" actually existed, when and how the Homeric poems originated, how they were transmitted, when and how they were finally written down, and their overall unity, had been dubbed "the Homeric Question". Following World War I , the Analyst school began to fall out of favor among Homeric scholars. It did not die out entirely, but it came to be increasingly seen as

6164-414: The leader of a people coming from Campania . In the early Bronze Age , at the end of the third millennium BC, new settlers of Aeolian origin came from Mycenaean Greece, giving their name to the islands. They had already settled in Metapontum in Italy and used the islands as outposts for controlling trading routes through the strait of Messina . Successive domestic buildings have been excavated on

6256-438: The main town, it was not safe to live on the rest of the island until Mediterranean piracy was largely eradicated, which did not occur until the 19th century. From the 1920s to the 1940s, the Lipari islands were used for the confinement of political prisoners, including Emilio Lussu , Curzio Malaparte , Carlo Rosselli , Giuseppe Ghetti, and Edda Mussolini . During the 1930s, the islands were used to detain exiled members of

6348-418: The myth of the Trojan War, others that the poem was inspired by multiple similar sieges that took place over the centuries. Most scholars now agree that the Homeric poems depict customs and elements of the material world that are derived from different periods of Greek history. For instance, the heroes in the poems use bronze weapons, characteristic of the Bronze Age in which the poems are set, rather than

6440-647: The northeast. In addition to these seven inhabited islands, there are a number of smaller, uninhabited islands and rocky cliffs, such as Basiluzzo , Strombolicchio , Dattilo  [ it ] and Lisca Bianca  [ it ] . The largest island is Lipari (37.5 km [14.5 sq mi]), followed by Salina (26.8 km [10.3 sq mi]), Vulcano (21.2 km [8.2 sq mi]), Stromboli (12.6 km [4.9 sq mi]), Filicudi (9.5 km [3.7 sq mi]) and Alicudi (5.2 km [2.0 sq mi]). The smallest island, at 3.4 km (1.3 sq mi),

6532-416: The other extreme, a few American scholars such as Gregory Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving tradition, which grew much more stable as the tradition progressed, but which did not fully cease to continue changing and evolving until as late as the middle of the second century BC. "'Homer" is a name of unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected in antiquity. One such linkage

6624-527: The poems were created in the eighth century, they continued to be orally transmitted with considerable revision until they were written down in the sixth century. After textualisation, the poems were each divided into 24 rhapsodes, today referred to as books, and labelled by the letters of the Greek alphabet . Most scholars attribute the book divisions to the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria , in Egypt. Some trace

6716-429: The poet Xenophanes of Colophon denounced as immoral. The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems are allegories . The Iliad and the Odyssey were widely used as school texts in ancient Greek and Hellenistic cultures. They were the first literary works taught to all students. The Iliad , particularly its first few books, was far more intently studied than

6808-457: The poet and that our inherited versions of the Iliad and Odyssey were in origin orally dictated texts. Albert Lord noted that the Balkan bards that he was studying revised and expanded their songs in their process of dictating. Some scholars hypothesize that a similar process of revision and expansion occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down. Other scholars hold that, after

6900-486: The poetry of Hesiod and that it must have been composed around 660–650 BC at the earliest, with the Odyssey up to a generation later. He also interprets passages in the Iliad as showing knowledge of historical events that occurred in the ancient Near East during the middle of the seventh century BC, including the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib in 689 BC and the Sack of Thebes by Ashurbanipal in 663/4 BC. At

6992-420: The preface to his translation of the Iliad , Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets". From antiquity to the present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of literature, music, art, and film. The question of by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars generally regard

7084-600: The reign of Pisistratus is referenced by the first-century BCE Roman orator Cicero and is also referenced in a number of other surviving sources, including two ancient Lives of Homer . From around 150 BCE, the texts of the Homeric poems found in papyrus fragments exhibit much less variation, and the text seems to have become relatively stable. After the establishment of the Library of Alexandria , Homeric scholars such as Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium and in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped establish

7176-496: The remains of the ex-penitentiary in the castle. However, not long after, the castle was converted to accommodate anti-Fascist political prisoners in enforced exile. Liparians fraternised with these exiles until the Allies ' liberation. After the war, the same room that had housed the opponents of Fascism became the Aeolian Archaeological Museum  [ it ] . Towards the end of the 19th century,

7268-471: The sack of Troy was dated to 1184 BC. By the nineteenth century, there was widespread scholarly skepticism that the Trojan War had ever happened and that Troy had even existed, but in 1873 Heinrich Schliemann announced to the world that he had discovered the ruins of Homer's Troy at Hisarlik in modern Turkey. Some contemporary scholars think the destruction of Troy VIIa c. 1220 BC was the origin of

7360-516: The society depicted by Homer is based on his own or one which was, even at the time of the poems' composition, known only as legends. The Homeric epics are largely set in the east and center of the Mediterranean , with some scattered references to Egypt , Ethiopia and other distant lands, in a warlike society that resembles that of the Greek world slightly before the hypothesized date of the poems' composition. In ancient Greek chronology,

7452-580: The throne of the Kingdom of Sicily . The period of prosperity which followed, ended with the domination of the Angevins and the rebellion of the Sicilians which culminated in the revolt of the Sicilian Vespers . The Aeolians however, remained loyal to Charles of Anjou , and commercial links were established with Naples , the capital of the Angevin kingdom. In 1337 Lipari opened its gates to

7544-484: The time when the poems were written in the early Iron Age. In the Iliad 10.260–265, Odysseus is described as wearing a helmet made of boar's tusks . Such helmets were not worn in Homer's time, but were commonly worn by aristocratic warriors between 1600 and 1150 BC. The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris and continued archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding of

7636-481: The two bays at the foot of the rock. The city wall ran near the two river-beds and then joined on to the Acropolis and the Civita hill. The mighty fortification, of which some traces are visible today in the district of Diana, divided the town from the necropolis. Carthaginian forces succeeded in holding the site briefly during their struggles with Dionysios I, tyrant of Syracuse in 394 BC, but once they were gone

7728-419: The two poems as the works of separate authors. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity , the most widespread that he was a blind bard from Ionia , a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary . Today, only

7820-495: The widespread praise of Homer as the epitome of wisdom, François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac wrote a scathing attack on the Homeric poems, declaring that they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, and without style, that Homer never existed, and that the poems were hastily cobbled together by incompetent editors from unrelated oral songs. Fifty years later, the English scholar Richard Bentley concluded that Homer did exist but that he

7912-532: Was an obscure, prehistoric oral poet whose compositions bear little relation to the Iliad and the Odyssey as they have been passed down. According to Bentley, Homer "wrote a Sequel of Songs and Rhapsodies, to be sung by himself for small Earnings and good Cheer at Festivals and other Days of Merriment; the Ilias he wrote for men, and the Odysseis for the other Sex. These loose songs were not collected together in

8004-509: Was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bard Demodocus ), that he resided at Chios , that he was the son of the river Meles and the nymph Critheïs , that he was a wandering bard, that he composed a varying list of other works (the "Homerica"), that he died either in Ios or after failing to solve a riddle set by fishermen, and various explanations for the name "Homer" ( Ὅμηρος , Hómēros ). Another tradition from

8096-583: Was eventually almost totally abandoned. The Normans conquered the Arabs throughout Sicily between 1060 and 1090, and repopulated the island once their rule was secure. The Lipari episcopal seat was reinstated in 1131. Though still plagued by pirate raids, the island was continually populated from this time onward. Rule of the island was passed from the Normans to the Hohenstaufen Kings, followed by

8188-477: Was expected to win, and answered all of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. Then, each of the poets was invited to recite the best passage from their work. Hesiod selected the beginning of Works and Days : "When the Pleiades born of Atlas  ... all in due season". Homer chose a description of Greek warriors in formation, facing the foe, taken from the Iliad . Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor,

8280-688: Was highly developed until the introduction of metals . During the Bronze Age , the Aeolians prospered by means of maritime commerce in an area which extended from Mycenae to the British Isles , from where tin was imported. Villages on the Aeolian islands flourished on Capo Graziano (Filicudi), Castello (Lipari), Serro dei Cianfi (Salina), Capo Milazzese (Panarea), and Portella (Salina). All these settlements were destroyed by new Italic invasions in 1250 BC. According to Diodorus Siculus ,

8372-589: Was not a single victim on the Aeolian Islands. The economic conditions of the islands improved greatly during the 17th century with agricultural progress ( malvasia grapes), capers , and a variety of fruit, vegetables and fishing). With the Bourbons came the introduction of criminal and political prisoners to the islands. In 1916, the penal colony was closed, but the Fascist regime unsuccessfully tried to reopen it in 1926. The island population reacted by pulling down

8464-449: Was to the Greek ὅμηρος ( hómēros ' hostage ' or ' surety ' ). The explanations suggested by modern scholars tend to mirror their position on the overall Homeric Question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both possible Greek and Phoenician etymologies. Scholars continue to debate questions such as whether the Trojan War actually took place – and if so when and where – and to what extent

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