Homer
Archaic Greek epic poet
Also known as: Homeros
Homer, the archaic Greek epic poet credited with the Iliad and the Odyssey, is for Quigley the literary marker of the pre-rational substrate from which Classical Civilization emerged. He functions as the cultural memory of Bronze-Age Achaean society as preserved through the post-invasion Iron Age.
Homer as historical witness
Quigley treats the Homeric epics as evidence of an early Greek world whose institutions and practices preceded the rationalist Athenian centuries. The Minoan-Achaean ruling structure, he notes, is preserved in the Homeric account itself: "Homer tells us quite specifically that Minos served for nine years, so that he could have been a nonhereditary magistrate" (EoC 243). The Trojan War — "the sacking, as described in Homer's Iliad, by the Greeks in the twelfth century" — marks "the end of the great Bronze Age archaic cultures everywhere in the West" (EoC 252). The poems themselves, "written in Ionia after the Dorian invasions, are based on memories of the great deeds of the Cretanized Achaeans before the invasions" (EoC 255). The weapons-systems analysis explicitly identifies "Homeric warfare" — chariots, spear, shock combat — as one of the defining military repertoires of Bronze Age Mediterranean civilization (WS 68).
The Golden Age and pre-rational cognition
In Tragedy and Hope Quigley uses Homer as a placeholder for the pre-rational cognitive system the Classical philosophers later replaced. The Christian inheritance, he writes, came into a society "with an incompatible philosophic outlook," producing "theological and dogmatic disputes," and one piece of that legacy was that Western thought "continued to think of a 'Golden Age' in the past, just as Homer had" (T&H 97). The cultural memory function persists even into Quigley's portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose education in "literature and music" extended to the point that he "could quote Homer in Greek and the Bhagavad-Gita in Sanskrit at appropriate occasions" (T&H 898) — an aside that turns Homer into a marker of mid-twentieth-century American humanistic culture as well as of archaic Greek poetry.
Cited in
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 243 Quigley
Homer tells us quite specifically that Minos served for nine years, so that he could have been a nonhereditary magistrate.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 252 Quigley
Rebuilt almost immediately but was sacked, as described in Homer's Iliad, by the Greeks in the twelfth century. This event marked the end of the great Bronze Age archaic cultures everywhere in the West.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 255 Quigley
The works of Homer. These works, written in Ionia after the Dorian invasions, are based on memories of the great deeds of the Cretanized Achaeans before the invasions.
- weapons-systems-political-stability · p. 68 Quigley
Europe combined the chariot and spear in what we regard as 'Homeric warfare,' while Egypt, western Asia, and Shang China combined the chariot with archery.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 97 Quigley
Continued to think of a 'Golden Age' in the past, just as Homer had.
- book-reviews · p. 125 Quigley
Landfalls against the scattered and incidental references in Homer's epic. No better man for the task could have been found, for Bradford is a shrewd judge of men, of places, of seamanship, and of documentary evidence.