Caption: "Homer, Iliad and Odyssey, 'The work of Homer is the most admirable product of human poetry' - Sainte-Beuve, printed by the Bremer Press, Munich, 1923. The 'Homeric question' regarding the authorship of these two great epics, the Iliad and Odyssey, is less important than their influence, artistic greatness, and portrayal of the philosophy that 'life is gloriously worth living.' The ancient Greeks believed that blind Homer, a poet of Asia Minor, was the author; but in 1795, Wolf, in his famous Prolegomena ad Homerum, claimed multiple authorship. The probable inaccuracies and the date of composition are also minor considerations. 'The work of Homer is at once a religion, a code of ethics, a work of chivalry, health, domestic pursuits and metaphysics.' It has been said that the Iliad, which is martial and impassioned, was written for men, while the Odyssey, a sequel, which deals with the marvelous, the romantic and the domestic, was written for women. These works were existent as early as 1000 B.C. and were handed down for several hundreds of years by public reciters until reduced to writing under Pisistratus (605-527 B.C.). There are many famous translations made by men who were poets in their own right; Chapman 1614, Pope 1725, Bryant 1871, Morris 1887. Prose translations are also numerous, the latest being that of the Odyssey by the famous English soldier T. E. Lawrence. He attempted to instill new vigor into the old story by a striking modernization of the language, an example of the fine art of translation. The most distinguished private press in Germany, the Bremer Press, was founded in 1911. ‘A large part of its significance,’ says Ransom, ‘is due to the work of Willi Wiegand and his most notable contribution is the celebrated Greek type, a happy blending of classic form and free rendering.’ This type was used for this magnificently printed monumental edition of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.”
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