The Iliad and Odyssey gave the ancient Mediterranean world many of its formative ideas – ideas that were emulated, rejected, and held up to scrutiny from all quarters over the following centuries. These poems attained enormous prestige from a very early period, and soon became central to the ways in which the ancient world conceived of and debated core issues in society, from political and military leadership to gender roles, social status, truth, deception and religion. Ancient thinkers credited Homer with the invention of politics, rhetoric, pastoral traditions, the representation of the (all-too-human) Olympian gods, and even the art of the symposium. Yet ancient thinkers also edited, criticised, mocked, rewrote, and extrapolated from these epics, questioning the values of their heroes, fashioning new versions of Homeric scenes, and debating the ongoing value and relevance of the Homeric worldview for an ancient society undergoing significant changes of its own. This lecture series explores the many ways in which the Homeric epics were deemed both foundational and controversial in the ancient world, catalysing ideological and interpretative debates that reverberate even up to the present.
Emily Kneebone is Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at the University of Nottingham. Her most recent publication is Oppian’s ‘Halieutica’: Charting a Didactic Epic, published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.