Homer between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature

Lawrence Kim (Assistant Professor, Trinity University, Texas)

Homer between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Country
United Kingdom
Published
1 January 2015
Pages
260
ISBN
9781107485297

Homer between History and Fiction in Imperial Greek Literature

Lawrence Kim (Assistant Professor, Trinity University, Texas)

Did Homer tell the ‘truth’ about the Trojan War? If so, how much, and if not, why not? The issue was hardly academic to the Greeks living under the Roman Empire, given the centrality of both Homer, the father of Greek culture, and the Trojan War, the event that inaugurated Greek history, to conceptions of Imperial Hellenism. This book examines four Greek texts of the Imperial period that address the topic - Strabo’s Geography, Dio of Prusa’s Trojan Oration, Lucian’s novella True Stories, and Philostratus’ fictional dialogue Heroicus - and shows how their imaginative explorations of Homer and his relationship to history raise important questions about the nature of poetry and fiction, the identity and intentions of Homer himself, and the significance of the heroic past and Homeric authority in Imperial Greek culture.

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