SAT写作经典例子之荷马_SAT写作

SAT写作经典例子之荷马

　　It is probable that Homers name was applied to two distinct individuals differing in temperament and artistic accomplishment, born perhaps as much as a century apart, but practicing the same traditional craft of oral composition and recitation. Although each became known as Homer, it may be that homros was a dialectical lonic word for a blind man and so came to be used generically of the old and often sightless wandering reciters of heroic legends in the traditional meter of unrhymed dactylic hexameters. Thus there could have been many Homers. The two epics ascribed to Homer, however, have been as highly prized in modern as in ancient times for their marvelous vividness of expression, their keenness of personal characterization, their unflagging interest, whether in narration of action or in animated dramatic dialogue.

　　Other Works

　　Later Greek times credited Homer with the composition of a group of comparatively short hymns addressed to various gods, of which 23 have survived. On internal evidence, however, only one or two of these at most can be the work of the poet of the two great epics. The burlesque epic The Battle of the Frogs and Mice has been preserved but adds nothing to Homers reputation. Several other epic poems of considerable length--the Cypria, the Little Iliad, the Phocais, the Thebais, the Capture of Oichalia--were widely ascribed to Homer in classical times. None of these has survived except in stray quoted verses. But even if they were preserved in full, it is highly doubtful whether modern scholarship would accept them as all by the same author.