Aristotle’s Opinion of Homer

                                                       Aristotle’s Opinion of Homer

Alexander the Great carried a copy of Homer’s Iliad with him everywhere he went because the epic served as his personal guide, inspiration and blueprint for heroic leadership. The Macedonian conqueror saw himself as a modern-day Achilles and he emulated the Greek hero and his glory and bravery as he sought his own Kleos or immortal fame during his extensive campaigns. He kept a copy of Homer’s work under his pillow, a copy that had been annotated by his famous tutor Aristotle. Since books, as we know them today, did not exist, it would have been impossible for Alexander to have taken the entire Iliad with him and therefore we can only assume that he had some abbreviated version of key points of advice that had been prepared for him by Aristotle.

But the fact remains that Aristotle had introduced the work to Alexander when he had been invited to become the boy’s tutor by his father King Philip of Macedon and that Homer’s work had a profound effect on the young lad. While on his campaigns, he visited the grave of Achilles and the city of Troy and had the corpse of Batis, one of his enemies, dragged behind his chariot in the same way that Achilles had treated the body of Hector. After he defeated Darius III of Persia, he had his personal annotated copy of the Iliad enclosed in a valuable golden coffer that he had confiscated from the enemy king. Alexander’s reverence for all things Homeric was a direct mirror of the high esteem that Aristotle held for the bard himself.

Aristotle’s first mention of Homer in his Poetics was praise for the poet who imitates men who were better than ourselves, as opposed to someone like Cleophon who presented men who were like us, or Hegemon and Nichocares who imitated men who were worse. He also praised him for his ability to be able to focus on only one specific point of a long and drawn out war and to make that shorter period of time come alive in the minds of his listeners. He said that Homer appears divine among the others because he did not attempt to celebrate the whole war. He could have done so but the result would have been too long, confusing and difficult to take in at one view.

Aristotle also praised the structural perfection of Homer’s works. In the words of Aristotle (Poetics XXXIX):

An epic poem ought also to have the  same forms as a tragedy; that is, it ought to be simple, complex, moral, or pathetic; its parts too, except melody and scenery, ought to be the same, for it should possess, peripatie, recognition, and passion, and it ought to be noble in its sentiment and diction; all which Homer first made use of, and with sufficient correctness. For each of his poems is composed in this manner; the Iliad, as a simple and pathetic, and the Odyssey, as a complex (for recognition runs through the whole of it) and moral. Moreover he excels all in the nobleness of his sentiment and diction.

Aristotle saw Homer as the master of dialogue and noted the bard’s ability to take a back seat to the narrative and to avoid placing himself in the middle of the action. His stories were not told from a first person perspective and other than for the initial invocation to the Muse for guidance, Homer’s tales are told in the third person. Aristotle viewed many other poets as failing in this regard. (Poetics XLII)

Homer, indeed, is deserving of praise in many other respects, and particularly because he alone of the poets is not ignorant of what he ought to do. For the poet should himself say as little as possible, as it is not by this means that he imitates. The others, however, carry on the action in person throughout, and therefore imitate few things, and that rarely; whereas he, having said a few words by way of preface, immediately introduces a man or woman, or something else possessed of manner, and nothing without, but something which has; and makes it speak for him.

Strangely, Aristotle also praised Homer for his ability to teach other poets how to tell a lie correctly. To make his point, he provided us with two examples:

This will be evident if we bring forward examples, with which Homer himself supplies us. When that poet represents a horse as speaking, we know that he affirms what is physically impossible, but we believe it, because he introduces Minerva as endowing it with that power. Again, when he tells us that Hector ran away from Achilles, we have much more difficulty in believing it, because although the thing is not like the other, in direct opposition to an established law of nature, yet it is so very different from what we would expect, that we give credit to it with extreme reluctance.

Aristotle saw Homer as a creator of believable worlds who, though he sometimes presented falsehoods like talking horses, in the main crafted dramatic reality and logical inferences. For example, Homer represents Diomede as sleeping on an ox's hide, and his men round him with their spears stuck in the ground. Had his object been to draw a picture of men who were always ready to fight, he would have done it more effectually had he represented each man as sleeping with his spear by his side. But this is not the case, for he only imitates what was a real practice.

Aristotle held Homer in extremely high regard and saw him as the supreme model for epic poetry. He viewed him as a godlike teacher of ethics and culture and a master of the poetic art. He praised him for his skilful use of imitation, plot unity and the creation of highly believable characters. Aristotle often drew upon Homer’s works for examples of the mechanics of good writing technique and no doubt passed on his thoughts to his student Alexander. But it is interesting to note that Alexander did not appear to be interested in the structure and form of good literature. His focus was on the content and as a young boy, was more taken with a swinging sword and a head rolling in the dust, rather than the purity of Homer’s dactylic hexameter.

I think that the following AI-Generated summary of Aristotle’s opinion of Homer is a good way to conclude and covers the key points well:

Key Aspects of Aristotle's View:

·         Master Imitator: Homer was praised for minimizing his own narrative voice and instead letting characters speak, creating vivid, dramatic scenes, which Aristotle saw as the highest form of poetic imitation.

·         Structural Genius: Despite the vastness of the Iliad and Odyssey, Aristotle considered them perfectly structured, with each poem imitating a single action, demonstrating epic's potential for unity.

·         Character Development: He admired Homer's ability to create characters with distinct personalities, even while depicting flaws, noting how Homer makes even bad characters engaging.

·         Teacher of "Lying" Skillfully: Aristotle saw Homer's ability to present plausible impossibilities and falsehoods (like the gods' intervention) as a positive, demonstrating the poet's skill in making the unreal believable.

·         Cultural & Ethical Guide: Homer served as a fundamental source of wisdom, ethics, and understanding the Greek world for Aristotle, who frequently cited the epics for philosophical and political insights.

·         Model for Tragedy: Because Homer achieved so much in epic, Aristotle used him as the benchmark against which to measure and elevate tragedy as a superior art form.  

In essence, Aristotle saw Homer not just as a storyteller but as the ultimate poetic craftsman and cultural touchstone, whose works were rich enough to be analyzed critically while retaining the highest standard for artistic achievement in poetry.