Pherae ( Greek : Φεραί) was a city and polis (city-state) in southeastern Ancient Thessaly . One of the oldest Thessalian cities, it was located in the southeast corner of Pelasgiotis . According to Strabo , it was near Lake Boebeïs 90 stadia from Pagasae , its harbor on the Gulf of Pagasae (Geography 9.5). The site is in the modern community of Velestino .
113-605: In Homer Pherae was the home of King Admetus and his wife, Alcestis , (whom Heracles went into Hades to rescue), as well as their son Eumelus (who was one of the suitors of Helen and led the Achaean forces of Pherae and Iolcus in the Trojan War) (Iliad 2.711; Odyssey 4.798). Thucydides lists Pherae among the early Thessalian supporters of Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (History of
226-686: A Europe of substantial literary and philosophical contact with the Muslim world, encouraged by such factors as Averroism ("Averrois, che'l gran comento feo" Commedia, Inferno, IV, 144, meaning "Averrois, who wrote the great comment") and the patronage of Alfonso X of Castile . Of the twelve wise men Dante meets in Canto ;X of the Paradiso , Thomas Aquinas and, even more so, Siger of Brabant were strongly influenced by Arabic commentators on Aristotle . Medieval Christian mysticism also shared
339-531: A backward path. Allegorically, the Inferno represents the Christian soul seeing sin for what it really is, and the three beasts represent three types of sin: the self-indulgent, the violent, and the malicious. These three types of sin also provide the three main divisions of Dante's Hell: Upper Hell, outside the city of Dis, for the four sins of indulgence ( lust , gluttony , avarice , anger ); Circle 7 for
452-453: 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
565-610: 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
678-531: 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
791-569: A location in ancient Thessaly is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . 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 is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey , two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature . Homer
904-576: A modern reading of the poem in his labyrinthine "Conversation on Dante". Erich Auerbach said Dante was the first writer to depict human beings as the products of a specific time, place and circumstance, as opposed to mythic archetypes or a collection of vices and virtues, concluding that this, along with the fully imagined world of the Divine Comedy , suggests that the Divine Comedy inaugurated realism and self-portraiture in modern fiction. In T. S. Eliot's estimation, "Dante and Shakespeare divide
1017-415: 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
1130-663: A specific moral scheme, subdivided into three subcategories, while two others of greater particularity are added to total nine. For example, the seven deadly sins that are cleansed in Purgatory are joined by special realms for the late repentant and the excommunicated . The core seven sins within Purgatory correspond to a moral scheme of love perverted, subdivided into three groups corresponding to excessive love ( Lust , Gluttony , Greed ), deficient love ( Sloth ), and malicious love ( Wrath , Envy , Pride ). In central Italy's political struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines , Dante
1243-631: A wheel, all at one speed, by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars. According to the Italian Dante Society, no original manuscript written by Dante has survived, although there are many manuscript copies from the 14th and 15th centuries – some 800 are listed on their site. Coluccio Salutati translated some quotations from the Comedy into Latin for his De fato et fortuna in 1396–1397. The first complete translation of
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#17327733263631356-460: Is accompanied by three guides: Virgil , who represents human reason , and who guides him for all of Inferno and most of Purgatorio ; Beatrice , who represents divine revelation in addition to theology, grace, and faith; and guides him from the end of Purgatorio onwards; and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux , who represents contemplative mysticism and devotion to Mary the Mother , guiding him in
1469-474: Is also a product of Scholasticism , especially as expressed by St. Thomas Aquinas. This influence is most pronounced in the Paradiso , where the text's portrayals of God, the beatific vision, and substantial forms all align with scholastic doctrine. It is also in the Paradiso that Aquinas and fellow scholastic St. Bonaventure appear as characters, introducing Dante to all of Heaven's wisest souls. Despite all this, there are issues on which Dante diverges from
1582-548: Is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri , begun c. 1308 and completed around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of Western literature . The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval worldview as it existed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish
1695-566: 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
1808-547: 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 the fall of Troy. The epics depict man's struggle, the Odyssey especially so as Odysseus perseveres through punishment of
1921-401: Is disputed ), Dante explains that this reference to Israel leaving Egypt refers both to the redemption of Christ and to "the conversion of the soul from the sorrow and misery of sin to the state of grace." Appropriately, therefore, it is Easter Sunday when Dante and Virgil arrive. The Purgatorio demonstrates the medieval knowledge of a spherical Earth . During the poem, Dante discusses
2034-604: 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
2147-404: Is known to have lectured on the Inferno , and it has been suggested that the poem may have influenced some of Galileo's own ideas regarding mechanics. Without access to the works of Homer , Dante used Virgil, Lucan , Ovid , and Statius as the models for the style, history, and mythology of the Comedy . This is most obvious in the case of Virgil, who appears as a mentor character throughout
2260-470: Is more psychological than that of the Inferno , being based on motives, rather than actions. It is also drawn primarily from Christian theology, rather than from classical sources. However, Dante's illustrative examples of sin and virtue draw on classical sources as well as on the Bible and on contemporary events. Love, a theme throughout the Divine Comedy , is particularly important for the framing of sin on
2373-646: Is often derived from the phraseology of the Vulgate . This was the only translation of the Bible Dante had access to, as it was one the vast majority of scribes were willing to copy during the Middle Ages. This includes five hundred or so direct quotes and references Dante derives from the Bible (or his memory of it). Dante also treats the Bible as a final authority on any matter, including on subjects scripture only approaches allegorically. The Divine Comedy
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#17327733263632486-428: Is thirty-five years old, half of the biblical lifespan of seventy ( Psalms 89:10, Vulgate), lost in a dark wood (understood as sin), assailed by beasts (a lion , a leopard , and a she-wolf ) he cannot evade and unable to find the "straight way" ( diritta via ) to salvation (symbolized by the sun behind the mountain). Conscious that he is ruining himself and that he is falling into a "low place" ( basso loco ) where
2599-505: 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
2712-617: The Apocalypse of Paul in the 4th century. Despite a lack of "official" approval, the Apocalypse of Paul would go on to be popular for centuries, possibly due to its popularity among the medieval monks that copied and preserved manuscripts in the turbulent centuries following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The Divine Comedy belongs to the same genre and was influenced by the Apocalypse of Paul. Dante lived in
2825-468: The Comedy was made into Latin prose by Giovanni da Serravalle in 1416 for two English bishops, Robert Hallam and Nicholas Bubwith , and an Italian cardinal, Amedeo di Saluzzo . It was made during the Council of Constance . The first verse translation, into Latin hexameters , was made in 1427–1431 by Matteo Ronto [ fr ] . The first translation of the Comedy into another vernacular
2938-568: The Ebro , dawn in Jerusalem, and noon on the River Ganges : Just as, there where its Maker shed His blood, the sun shed its first rays, and Ebro lay beneath high Libra, and the ninth hour's rays were scorching Ganges' waves; so here, the sun stood at the point of day's departure when God's angel – happy – showed himself to us. Dante travels through
3051-573: 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
3164-510: The Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars generally regard 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
3277-844: 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 ,
3390-443: 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
3503-440: The Inferno only. The Divine Comedy has been a source of inspiration for countless artists for almost seven centuries. There are many references to Dante's work in literature . In music , Franz Liszt was one of many composers to write works based on the Divine Comedy . In sculpture , the work of Auguste Rodin includes themes from Dante. Sculptor Timothy Schmalz created a series of 100 sculptures, one for each canto, on
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3616-604: The Inferno , allows Dante the freedom of not having to involve the reader in description, and allows him to "[make] room in his poem for the discussion of a great many subjects of the utmost importance, thus widening its range and increasing its variety." Dante called the poem "Comedy" (the adjective "Divine" was added later, in the 16th century) because poems in the ancient world were classified as High ("Tragedy") or Low ("Comedy"). Low poems had happy endings and were written in everyday language, whereas High poems treated more serious matters and were written in an elevated style. Dante
3729-511: The Moon , containing the inconstant, whose vows to God waned as the moon and thus lack fortitude; Mercury , containing the ambitious, who were virtuous for glory and thus lacked justice; and Venus , containing the lovers, whose love was directed towards another than God and thus lacked temperance. The final four incidentally are positive examples of the cardinal virtues, all led on by the Sun , containing
3842-462: 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
3955-489: The Neoplatonic influence of Sufis such as Ibn Arabi . Philosopher Frederick Copleston argued in 1950 that Dante's respectful treatment of Averroes , Avicenna , and Siger of Brabant indicates his acknowledgement of a "considerable debt" to Islamic philosophy. In 1919, Miguel Asín Palacios , a Spanish scholar and a Catholic priest, published La Escatología musulmana en la Divina Comedia ( Islamic Eschatology in
4068-639: 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
4181-574: 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
4294-573: The Oratorio della Nunziatella in Foligno. The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory : each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternative meanings. Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem (see the Letter to Cangrande ) he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory: the historical, the moral, the literal, and
4407-552: The Paradiso , such as a sevenfold division of Paradise , although this is not unique to the Kitab al Miraj or Islamic cosmology. Many scholars have not been satisfied that Dante was influenced by the Kitab al Miraj . The 20th-century Orientalist Francesco Gabrieli expressed skepticism regarding the claimed similarities, and the lack of evidence of a vehicle through which it could have been transmitted to Dante. The Italian philologist Maria Corti pointed out that, during his stay at
4520-427: 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
4633-465: The Tuscan language , in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language . It is divided into three parts: Inferno , Purgatorio , and Paradiso . The poem discusses "the state of the soul after death and presents an image of divine justice meted out as due punishment or reward", and describes Dante's travels through Hell , Purgatory , and Heaven . Allegorically , the poem represents
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4746-590: The anagogical . The structure of the poem is also quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns distributed throughout the work, particularly threes and nines. The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination. Dante's use of real characters, according to Dorothy Sayers in her introduction to her translation of
4859-451: The science of his day (this mixture of science with poetry has received both praise and criticism over the centuries). The Purgatorio repeatedly refers to the implications of a spherical Earth , such as the different stars visible in the southern hemisphere , the altered position of the sun , and the various time zones of the Earth. For example, at sunset in Purgatory it is midnight at
4972-545: 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
5085-518: The Black Guelphs. This exile, which lasted the rest of Dante's life, shows its influence in many parts of the Comedy , from prophecies of Dante's exile to Dante's views of politics, to the eternal damnation of some of his opponents. The last word in each of the three cantiche is stelle ("stars"). The poem begins on the night before Good Friday in the year 1300, "halfway along our life's path" ( Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita ). Dante
5198-800: 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
5311-690: The Divine Comedy ), an account of parallels between early Islamic philosophy and the Divine Comedy . Palacios argued that Dante derived many features of and episodes about the hereafter from the spiritual writings of Ibn Arabi and from the Isra and Mi'raj , or night journey of Muhammad to heaven. The latter is described in the ahadith and the Kitab al Miraj (translated into Latin in 1264 or shortly before as Liber scalae Machometi , "The Book of Muhammad's Ladder"), and has significant similarities to
5424-641: The Excommunicated from the church and the Late repentant who died, often violently, before receiving rites. Thus the total comes to nine, with the addition of the Garden of Eden at the summit, equaling ten. Allegorically, the Purgatorio represents the Christian life. Christian souls arrive escorted by an angel, singing In exitu Israel de Aegypto . In his letter to Cangrande (the authenticity of which
5537-500: 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
5650-476: 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
5763-433: 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
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#17327733263635876-563: 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
5989-544: The Mountain of Purgatory. While the love that flows from God is pure, it can become sinful as it flows through humanity. Humans can sin by using love towards improper or malicious ends ( Wrath , Envy , Pride ), or using it to proper ends but with love that is either not strong enough ( Sloth ) or love that is too strong ( Lust , Gluttony , Greed ). Below the seven purges of the soul is the Ante-Purgatory, containing
6102-651: The Peloponnesian War 2.22). Toward the end of the war Lycophron established a tyranny at Pherae. On his death his son Jason became dictator and by around 374 BC extended his rule throughout Thessaly. After Jason's assassination and that of his successor, Polydorus, Alexander ruled Pherae with great harshness until he was killed by his wife, Thebe, in 359 BC, and Thessaly was conquered by the Thebans . Philip of Macedon conquered Pherae in 352 BC and subjected Thessaly to Macedonian rule. In Roman times Pherae
6215-492: The centre of the Earth in the Inferno , and comments on the resulting change in the direction of gravity in Canto XXXIV (lines 76–120). A little earlier (XXXIII, 102–105), he queries the existence of wind in the frozen inner circle of hell, since it has no temperature differentials. Inevitably, given its setting, the Paradiso discusses astronomy extensively, but in the Ptolemaic sense. The Paradiso also discusses
6328-482: 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
6441-546: The court of Alfonso X, Dante's mentor Brunetto Latini met Bonaventura de Siena, a Tuscan who had translated the Kitab al Miraj from Arabic into Latin. Corti speculates that Brunetto may have provided a copy of that work to Dante. René Guénon , a Sufi convert and scholar of Ibn Arabi, confirms in The Esoterism of Dante the theory of the Islamic influence (direct or indirect) on Dante. Palacios' theory that Dante
6554-596: 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
6667-553: The depths of Hell, Dante and Virgil ascend out of the undergloom to the Mountain of Purgatory on the far side of the world. The Mountain is on an island, the only land in the Southern Hemisphere , created by the displacement of rock which resulted when Satan 's fall created Hell (which Dante portrays as existing underneath Jerusalem ). The mountain has seven terraces, corresponding to the seven deadly sins or "seven roots of sinfulness". The classification of sin here
6780-558: The different stars visible in the southern hemisphere , the altered position of the sun, and the various time zones of the Earth. At this stage it is, Dante says, sunset at Jerusalem, midnight on the River Ganges , and sunrise in Purgatory. After an initial ascension, Beatrice guides Dante through the nine celestial spheres of Heaven . These are concentric and spherical, as in Aristotelian and Ptolemaic cosmology. While
6893-545: 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
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#17327733263637006-479: 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
7119-456: 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
7232-511: The essence of God, completing the nine-fold division to ten. Dante meets and converses with several great saints of the Church, including Thomas Aquinas , Bonaventure , Saint Peter , and St. John . Near the end, Beatrice departs and Bernard of Clairvaux takes over as the guide. The Paradiso is more theological in nature than the Inferno and the Purgatorio . However, Dante admits that
7345-424: The final cantos of Paradiso . The work was originally simply titled Comedìa ( pronounced [komeˈdiːa] , Tuscan for "Comedy") – so also in the first printed edition, published in 1472 – later adjusted to the modern Italian Commedia . The adjective Divina was added by Giovanni Boccaccio , owing to its subject matter and lofty style, and the first edition to name the poem Divina Comedia in
7458-465: The first two canticles and who has his epic The Aeneid praised with language Dante reserves elsewhere for Scripture. Ovid is given less explicit praise in the poem, but besides Virgil, Dante uses Ovid as a source more than any other poet, mostly through metaphors and fantastical episodes based on those in The Metamorphoses . Less influential than either of the two are Statius and Lucan,
7571-432: 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
7684-706: 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, 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
7797-526: The importance of the experimental method in science, with a detailed example in lines 94–105 of Canto II: A briefer example occurs in Canto XV of the Purgatorio (lines 16–21), where Dante points out that both theory and experiment confirm that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection . Other references to science in the Paradiso include descriptions of clockwork in Canto XXIV (lines 13–18), and Thales' theorem about triangles in Canto XIII (lines 101–102). Galileo Galilei
7910-434: 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
8023-460: The last three cantos. The structure of the three realms follows a common numerical pattern of 9 plus 1, for a total of 10. There are nine circles of the Inferno, followed by Lucifer contained at its bottom; nine rings of Mount Purgatory, followed by the Garden of Eden crowning its summit; and the nine celestial bodies of Paradiso, followed by the Empyrean containing the very essence of God. Within each group of nine, seven elements correspond to
8136-535: 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
8249-603: 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
8362-481: The latter of whom has only been given proper recognition as a source in the Divine Comedy in the twentieth century. Besides Dante's fellow poets, the classical figure that most influenced the Comedy is Aristotle . Dante built up the philosophy of the Comedy with the works of Aristotle as a foundation, just as the scholastics used Aristotle as the basis for their thinking. Dante knew Aristotle directly from Latin translations of his works and indirectly quotations in
8475-515: The medieval vulgate. Others, such as Martin West (1998–2000) or T. W. Allen , fall somewhere between these two extremes. Him with that falchion in his hand behold, Who comes before the three, even as their lord. That one is Homer, Poet sovereign; This is a partial list of translations into English of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey . Divine Comedy The Divine Comedy ( Italian : Divina Commedia [diˈviːna komˈmɛːdja] )
8588-535: 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
8701-587: The night before Good Friday to the Wednesday after Easter in the spring of 1300. The Roman poet Virgil guides him through Hell and Purgatory; Beatrice , Dante's ideal woman, guides him through Heaven. Beatrice was a Florentine woman he had met in childhood and admired from afar in the mode of the then-fashionable courtly love tradition, which is highlighted in Dante's earlier work La Vita Nuova . The Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux guides Dante through
8814-416: 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
8927-450: The poem and generally considered to be part of the first cantica , brings the total number of cantos to 100. It is generally accepted, however, that the first two cantos serve as a unitary prologue to the entire epic, and that the opening two cantos of each cantica serve as prologues to each of the three cantiche . The number three is prominent in the work, represented in part by the number of cantiche and their lengths. Additionally,
9040-527: 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
9153-429: 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
9266-457: 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
9379-486: 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
9492-441: The prudent, whose wisdom lighted the way for the other virtues, to which the others are bound (constituting a category on its own). Mars contains the men of fortitude who died in the cause of Christianity; Jupiter contains the kings of justice; and Saturn contains the temperate, the monks. The seven subdivided into three are raised further by two more categories: the eighth sphere of the fixed stars that contain those who achieved
9605-600: 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
9718-543: The romantic reappraisal of Dante, juxtaposing him to Homer. The Comedy was "rediscovered" in the English-speaking world by William Blake – who illustrated several passages of the epic – and the Romantic writers of the 19th century. Later authors such as T. S. Eliot , Ezra Pound , Samuel Beckett , C. S. Lewis and James Joyce have drawn on it for inspiration. The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
9831-412: 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
9944-452: The scholastic doctrine, such as in his unbridled praise for poetry. Consequently, the Divine Comedy has been called "the Summa in verse". The Apocalypse of Peter is one of the earliest examples of a Christian-Jewish katabasis , a genre of explicit depictions of heaven and hell. Later works inspired by it include the Apocalypse of Thomas in the 2nd–4th century, and more importantly,
10057-479: The sins of violence against one's neighbor, against oneself, and against God, art, and nature; and Circles 8 and 9 for the sins of fraud and treachery. Added to these are two dissimilar, spiritual categories: Limbo, in Circle 1, contains the virtuous pagans who were not sinful but were ignorant of Christ, and Circle 6 contains the heretics who contradicted the doctrine and confused the spirit of Christ. Having survived
10170-516: 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,
10283-468: The soul's journey towards God , beginning with the recognition and rejection of sin ( Inferno ), followed by the penitent Christian life ( Purgatorio ), which is then followed by the soul's ascent to God ( Paradiso ). Dante draws on medieval Catholic theology and philosophy, especially Thomistic philosophy derived from the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas . In the poem, the pilgrim Dante
10396-419: The structures of the Inferno and Purgatorio were based on different classifications of sin, the structure of the Paradiso is based on the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues . The seven lowest spheres of Heaven deal solely with the cardinal virtues of Prudence , Fortitude , Justice and Temperance . The first three spheres involve a deficiency of one of the cardinal virtues –
10509-678: The sun is silent (' l sol tace ), Dante is at last rescued by Virgil, and the two of them begin their journey to the underworld. Each sin's punishment in Inferno is a contrapasso , a symbolic instance of poetic justice ; for example, in Canto XX, fortune-tellers and soothsayers must walk with their heads on backwards, unable to see what is ahead, because that was what they had tried to do in life: they had their faces twisted toward their haunches and found it necessary to walk backward, because they could not see ahead of them. ... and since he wanted so to see ahead, he looks behind and walks
10622-542: The theological virtues of faith , hope , and love , and represent the Church Triumphant – the total perfection of humanity, cleansed of all the sins and carrying all the virtues of heaven; and the ninth circle, or Primum Mobile (corresponding to the geocentricism of medieval astronomy), which contains the angels, creatures never poisoned by original sin. Topping them all is the Empyrean , which contains
10735-484: 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
10848-478: The title was that of the Venetian humanist Lodovico Dolce , published in 1555 by Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari . The Divine Comedy is composed of 14,233 lines that are divided into three cantiche (singular cantica ) – Inferno ( Hell ), Purgatorio ( Purgatory ), and Paradiso ( Paradise ) – each consisting of 33 cantos (Italian plural canti ). An initial canto, serving as an introduction to
10961-408: The verse scheme used, terza rima , is hendecasyllabic (lines of eleven syllables), with the lines composing tercets according to the rhyme scheme ABA BCB CDC DED ... The total number of syllables in each tercet is thus 33, the same as the number of cantos in each cantica . Written in the first person, the poem tells of Dante's journey through the three realms of the dead, lasting from
11074-478: The vision of heaven he receives is merely the one his human eyes permit him to see, and thus Dante's personal vision. The Divine Comedy finishes with Dante seeing the Triune God . In a flash of understanding that he cannot express, Dante finally understands the mystery of Christ 's divinity and humanity, and his soul becomes aligned with God's love: But already my desire and my will were being turned like
11187-495: 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
11300-575: The works of Albertus Magnus . Dante even acknowledges Aristotle's influence explicitly in the poem, specifically when Virgil justifies the Inferno's structure by citing the Nicomachean Ethics . In the same canto, Virgil draws on Cicero 's De Officiis to explain why sins of the intellect are worse than sins of violence, a key point that would be explored from canto XVIII to the end of the Inferno . The Divine Comedy ' s language
11413-461: The world between them. There is no third." For Jorge Luis Borges the Divine Comedy was "the best book literature has achieved". The Divine Comedy has been translated into English more times than any other language, and new English translations of the Divine Comedy continue to be published regularly. Notable English translations of the complete poem include the following. A number of other translators, such as Robert Pinsky , have translated
11526-532: 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
11639-509: 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
11752-480: Was conquered by Antiochus the Great of Syria in 191 BC, but lost it that same year to the Roman consul of the year Manius Acilius Glabrio (Livy 36.1-14). The famous Messeis spring (the spring of Kefalovryso at Velestino ) was probably at Pherae (Strabo, Geography 9.5; Iliad 6.457). 39°23′03″N 22°44′16″E / 39.384163°N 22.737728°E / 39.384163; 22.737728 This article about
11865-477: 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,
11978-465: Was influenced by Ibn Arabi was satirized by the Turkish academic Orhan Pamuk in his novel The Black Book . In addition to that, it has been claimed that Risālat al-Ghufrān ("The Epistle of Forgiveness"), a satirical work mixing Arabic poetry and prose written by Abu al-ʿAlaʾ al-Maʿarri around 1033 CE, had an influence on, or even inspired, Dante's Divine Comedy . The Divine Comedy
12091-419: Was its first American translator, and modern poets, including Seamus Heaney , Robert Pinsky , John Ciardi , W. S. Merwin , and Stanley Lombardo , have also produced translations of all or parts of the book. In Russia, beyond Alexander Pushkin 's translation of a few tercets, Osip Mandelstam 's late poetry has been said to bear the mark of a "tormented meditation" on the Comedy . In 1934, Mandelstam gave
12204-611: Was not always as well-regarded as it is today. Although recognized as a masterpiece in the centuries immediately following its publication, the work was largely ignored during the Enlightenment , with some notable exceptions such as Vittorio Alfieri ; Antoine de Rivarol , who translated the Inferno into French; and Giambattista Vico , who in the Scienza nuova and in the Giudizio su Dante inaugurated what would later become
12317-615: Was one of the first in the Middle Ages to write of a serious subject, the Redemption of humanity, in the low and "vulgar" Italian language and not the Latin one might expect for such a serious topic. Boccaccio 's account that an early version of the poem was begun by Dante in Latin is still controversial. Although the Divine Comedy is primarily a religious poem, discussing sin, virtue, and theology, Dante also discusses several elements of
12430-678: Was part of the Guelphs, who in general favored the papacy over the Holy Roman Emperor . Florence's Guelphs split into factions around 1300 – the White Guelphs and the Black Guelphs. Dante was among the White Guelphs who were exiled in 1302 by the Lord-Mayor Cante de' Gabrielli di Gubbio , after troops under Charles of Valois entered the city, at the request of Pope Boniface VIII , who supported
12543-544: 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 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
12656-467: Was the prose translation into Castilian completed by Enrique de Villena in 1428. The first vernacular verse translation was that of Andreu Febrer into Catalan in 1429. The first printed edition was published in Foligno , Italy, by Johann Numeister and Evangelista Angelini da Trevi on 11 April 1472. Of the 300 copies printed, fourteen still survive. The original printing press is on display in
12769-449: 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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