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The Homeridae were a family, clan or professional lineage claiming descent from the legendary Greek epic poet Homer. Image File history File links Unbalanced_scales. ... Homer (Greek: , Hómēros) was a legendary early Greek poet and aoidos (rhapsode) traditionally credited with the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey. ...

The origin of the name seems obvious: in classical Greek the word should mean "children of Homer". An analogous name, Asclepiadae, identified a clan or guild of medical practitioners as "children of Asclepius". However, since the existence of the Homeridae is authenticated while that of Homer is not, and since Greek homeros is a common noun meaning "hostage", it was suggested even in ancient times that the Homeridae were in reality "children (or descendants) of hostages". The natural further step is to argue that Homer, the supposed founder, is a mythical figure, a mere back-formation, deriving his name from that of the later guild. The History of Greece extends back to the arrival of the Greeks in Europe some time before 1500 BC, even though there has only been an independent state called Greece since Turkey, Italy and Libya. ... Asclepius (Greek also rendered Aesculapius in Latin and transliterated Asklepios) was the god of medicine and healing in ancient Greek mythology, according to which he was born a mortal but was given immortality as the constellation Ophiuchus after his death. ... In etymology, the process of back-formation is the creation of a neologism by reinterpreting an earlier word as a compound and removing the spuriously supposed affixes. ...

Evidence on the Homeridae relates to the late sixth, fifth and fourth centuries BC, after which nothing more is heard of them.

The first contemporary mention of this group is in a poem of about 485 BC by Pindar: Pindar (or Pindarus) (522 BC – 443 BC), perhaps the greatest of the nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, was born at Cynoscephalae, a village in Thebes. ...

Later contemporary references come in fourth century texts, in the works of Plato and Isocrates. In one of his essays, written around 350 BC, Isocrates says: For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation). ... Isocrates (436–338 BC), Greek rhetorician. ...

At a slightly earlier date Plato makes a similar comment: Helen was the wife of Menelaus and reputed to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and her abduction by Paris brought about the Trojan War. ...

There are two further mentions, in Plato's Republic and in the Ion. In the latter the rhapsode Ion claims that he should be "crowned by the Homeridae" for his work in promoting the poems of Homer.^[1] Eros. ...

Supplementary information, of uncertain validity, is found in later Greek antiquarian writings. A scholarly commentary on Pindar's poem gives the following details. The name Homeridae originally meant descendants of Homer, who maintained the tradition of singing his poems, but afterwards was applied to rhapsodes who did not claim literal descent from him. One famous member, Cynaethus of Chios, was at the centre of a group who were specially active in composing new poems and attaching them to Homer's works. Cynaethus himself was the author of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and was the first to perform Homeric poems at Syracuse.^[2] A second source is Harpocration, who names three early writers of Greek local history whose works are now lost: Acusilaus and Hellanicus of Lesbos apparently stated that the Homeridae were named after Homer, while Seleucus said that they were not.^[3] Finally, the geographer Strabo says that the people of Chios adduced the Homeridae as evidence that Homer came from Chios; which implies, though Strabo does not say it, that the Homeridae, too, came from Chios.^[4] Cynaethus or Cinaethus (Κιναιθος or Κυναιθος), of Chios, a rhapsodist, who was gene­rally supposed by the ancients to have been the author of the Homeric hymn to Apollo. ... Chios (Greek: , alternative transliterations Khios and Hios, see also List of traditional Greek place names; Ottoman Turkish: صاقيز Sakız; Genoese: Scio) is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea five miles off the Turkish coasts. ... The anonymous Homeric Hymns are a collection of ancient Greek hymns. ... Syracuse (Italian, Siracusa, ancient Syracusa - see also List of traditional Greek place names) is a city on the eastern coast of Sicily and the capital of the province of Syracuse, Italy. ... Valerius Harpocration was a Greek grammarian of Alexandria, of unknown date. ... Acusilaus or Akousilaos of Argos, son of Cabas or Scabras, was a Greek logographer and mythographer who flourished around 500 BC but whose work survives only in fragments and summaries of individual points. ... Hellanicus of Lesbos (in Ancient Greek Hellanicós) (born in Mytilene on the isle of Lesbos in 490 BC) was an ancient Greek logographer who flourished during the latter half of the 5th century BC. He is reputed to have lived to the age of 85. ... The Greek geographer Strabo in a 16th century engraving. ...

It seems from this evidence that the Homeridae were a guild of oral performers (rhapsodes, as implied by Pindar's phrase "singers of stitched words") who claimed to inherit Homer's tradition and performed poems ascribed to Homer, no doubt including the Iliad and Odyssey. They also developed stories about how the poems had originated, such as Homer's dream of Helen. Like other rhapsodes, they travelled widely, but they were perhaps based on Chios. Certain Homeridae were active in adding new poems to the tradition. Incidentally, some people believed these attributions: Thucydides, though not easily fooled, quotes from a version of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo similar to the text now known and confidently ascribes it to Homer.^[5] In classical antiquity, a rhapsode was a professional reciter of poetry, especially the epics of Homer, but also the wisdom-verse of Hesiod and the satires of Archilochus, among others. ... Bust of Thucydides residing in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. ...

Notes

ilike BEEF yummmmmmmm The Homeridae were a family, clan or professional lineage claiming descent from the legendary Greek epic poet Homer. ...

Bibliography

• Walter Burkert, 'Kynaithos, Polycrates and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo' in Arktouros: Hellenic studies presented to B. M. W. Knox ed. G. W. Bowersock, W. Burkert, M. C. J. Putnam (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1979) pp. 53-62.
• Dalby, Andrew (2006), Rediscovering Homer, New York, London: Norton, ISBN 0393057887, pp. 167-175
• Graziosi, Barbara (2002), Inventing Homer: the early reception of epic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521809665