How can somebody be famous throughout the world and be known by
almost everybody while not exposing any information about who exactly
they are, where they were born, or really any important facts about
their lives. Homer, the great Greek epic writer who probably lived in
the 8th century BC, is extremely well-known from his works, but we know
very little about Homer the person. Homer is often considered the
greatest of all of the Greek epic poets and is still widely studied
today. He is known for his epics the Iliad and the
Odyssey, two long poems about war in some regard. Even with his work's vast popularity and the large amount of interest that surrounds him, we still haven't managed to learn much about him outside of legend and secondary accounts. Even with this very limited amount of information about him we still know that he was very interested in riddles and a lot of riddles pertaining to his life and his works still survive.
Homer grew up in a society that appreciated riddles very much for their intellectual value and entertainment value. For this reason he included some of them in his works to challenge the protagonist. As a writer, Homer uses riddles in a way that is very similar to the way that most modern writers use riddles. He uses them as an intellectual test of the protagonist. This is in contrast to how Plato and Aristotle, the philosophers, used riddles only a few centuries after him. These philosophers used riddles to create metaphors to explain very broad and complex ideas in simple terms. Although they did understand riddles as given by Homer.
The most popular and obvious examples of riddles in Homer's works comes from his epic the Odyssey. In this epic the protagonist, Odysseus, is posed a few riddles by a few of the foes he meets along the way. On his trip home to his wife he and his men encounter some Sirens. The Sirens sing a song to draw in sailors to their eventual death. The riddle is the song they sing. The song is somewhat cryptic but if you look at it closely you can determine that they are revealing that death comes at the end of their song. Another riddle that he encounters in the story is one from the Sphinx. The Sphinx asks everybody a riddle and if they cannot answer it the Sphinx kills them, but if answered correctly the Sphinx dies. The riddle is "What is that which in the morning goeth upon four feet; upon two feet in the afternoon; and in the Evening upon three?" The answer to this riddle is man because we walk on four legs as children, two as adults, and two with a cane as seniors. In both of these riddles Odysseus proves that he is not only a man of brawn, but also a man of wit.
Homer is one of the greatest mysteries of the Ancient Greeks, but his epics are well-known and well written. Although we don't know who he was exactly, he will live forever through his work.
Odyssey, two long poems about war in some regard. Even with his work's vast popularity and the large amount of interest that surrounds him, we still haven't managed to learn much about him outside of legend and secondary accounts. Even with this very limited amount of information about him we still know that he was very interested in riddles and a lot of riddles pertaining to his life and his works still survive.
Homer grew up in a society that appreciated riddles very much for their intellectual value and entertainment value. For this reason he included some of them in his works to challenge the protagonist. As a writer, Homer uses riddles in a way that is very similar to the way that most modern writers use riddles. He uses them as an intellectual test of the protagonist. This is in contrast to how Plato and Aristotle, the philosophers, used riddles only a few centuries after him. These philosophers used riddles to create metaphors to explain very broad and complex ideas in simple terms. Although they did understand riddles as given by Homer.
The most popular and obvious examples of riddles in Homer's works comes from his epic the Odyssey. In this epic the protagonist, Odysseus, is posed a few riddles by a few of the foes he meets along the way. On his trip home to his wife he and his men encounter some Sirens. The Sirens sing a song to draw in sailors to their eventual death. The riddle is the song they sing. The song is somewhat cryptic but if you look at it closely you can determine that they are revealing that death comes at the end of their song. Another riddle that he encounters in the story is one from the Sphinx. The Sphinx asks everybody a riddle and if they cannot answer it the Sphinx kills them, but if answered correctly the Sphinx dies. The riddle is "What is that which in the morning goeth upon four feet; upon two feet in the afternoon; and in the Evening upon three?" The answer to this riddle is man because we walk on four legs as children, two as adults, and two with a cane as seniors. In both of these riddles Odysseus proves that he is not only a man of brawn, but also a man of wit.
Homer is one of the greatest mysteries of the Ancient Greeks, but his epics are well-known and well written. Although we don't know who he was exactly, he will live forever through his work.
