Homer and Hesiod on Two Societies (Hellas/Barbaroi)

Abstract

Here I call the last poet(s) in the oral heroic epic tradition in Ancient Greece who has created the Iliad and the Odyssey as “Homer”. And here I discuss about the two poets’ (Hesiod and “Homer”) difference in their views of the two ethnic groups, Hellenes and Barbaroi, after making sure that Hesiod makes us realize that, unlike Homer, he had a clear idea of the world outside the Hellenic world: he certainly made a distinction between two groups (frg. 130 M-W, Op.527f., 651-3). Since generally the notion of national or ethnic unity needs a fairly long period for its establishment among the people concerned, we could consider that the difference is signaling a considerable difference between the two poets’ times. This possibly implied chronological distance between them is, though, against the popular ancient view that they were contemporaries. Probably also this distance is against the major current view among classicists, certainly it is against my view. I suggest in this paper a new way of explanation for the difference of their views about the world. I suggest that the difference does not necessarily involve a chronological distance between them. I try an explanation based on the different modes of epic narration by the two poets. Homer on the one hand narrates traditional heroic world in a traditional form: he narrates from behind the scenes or the stages (to borrow the explanation of epic narration offered by Plato in Republic 393B-D). Hesiod, on the other, never hides himself behind the flow of his epic narration: he builds up his epic narration, although many materials of his poems are mythic and legendary, totally on his individual thoughts and his own daily world. His new mode (it is certainly an innovation introduced by him) of epic narrative made it possible for him to introduce his recently acquired vocabularies about his own daily world, such as “Hellas” into his epic narration.