c. 800 BC · 8th century BC
Homer is the legendary ancient Greek poet to whom the Iliad and the Odyssey are attributed, the two epic poems that stand at the beginning of European literature. Nothing certain is known about him: the poems probably took shape in the eighth or seventh century BC from a long tradition of oral poetry. The Iliad tells of the anger of Achilles during the Trojan War, the Odyssey of the long voyage home of Odysseus.
Works
The Iliad, The Odyssey
Who was Homer?
The ancient Greeks themselves did not agree about Homer. Several cities, among them Smyrna and Chios, claimed to be his birthplace, and tradition pictured him as a blind singer wandering from court to court. Ancient biographies of him are late and largely legendary.
Since the eighteenth century scholars have debated what became known as the Homeric question: whether the two epics were composed by one poet, by two, or assembled from many shorter songs. Most now think that a single great poet, or perhaps two, shaped each poem within a long tradition.
Oral poetry
In the 1920s and 1930s the American scholar Milman Parry, studying singers of epic in Yugoslavia, showed that the Homeric poems bear the marks of oral composition: repeated epithets, such as swift-footed Achilles or rosy-fingered Dawn, and stock scenes that helped a singer compose in performance.
The poems were probably written down in the eighth or seventh century BC, after the Greeks adopted the alphabet. According to ancient tradition, a definitive text was established in Athens in the sixth century BC for recitation at the festival of the Panathenaia.
The Iliad and the Odyssey
The Iliad, some 15,700 lines in twenty-four books, covers a few weeks in the tenth year of the Trojan War, from the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon to the funeral of the Trojan hero Hector. The Odyssey, of about 12,100 lines, follows Odysseus's ten-year wanderings after the fall of Troy, among the Cyclops, the enchantress Circe and the Sirens, and his return to Ithaca, where suitors are besieging his wife Penelope.
Both are composed in dactylic hexameter, the metre of Greek epic. The Odyssey, with its flashbacks, disguises and recognitions, has been called the first great adventure story.
Homer's legacy
In ancient Greece Homer was the basis of education; children learned his verses by heart, and philosophers quoted and argued with him. Virgil's Aeneid, written in Rome, takes up where the Iliad ends. In the Middle Ages Western Europe knew the Trojan War mainly through Latin retellings, until Greek manuscripts came back to Italy in the fifteenth century.
Homer has been translated into English many times, from George Chapman's version, which inspired Keats, and Alexander Pope's rhymed couplets to the prose of Samuel Butler (1900), quoted on Guesseo. James Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) retells the Odyssey as a single day in Dublin.
Anecdotes
Schliemann's Troy
In 1871 the German businessman Heinrich Schliemann, convinced that the Iliad described real events, began digging at the mound of Hisarlik in north-western Turkey. He found the remains of a series of cities, one on top of the other, and a hoard of gold that he called Priam's Treasure. Archaeologists now think the treasure is about a thousand years older than any Trojan War.
The authoress of the Odyssey
In 1897 the English novelist Samuel Butler, who also translated both epics, published a book arguing that the Odyssey had been written by a young Sicilian woman, who portrayed herself as the princess Nausicaa. Few scholars accepted the theory, but the book is still read as a lively and provocative piece of criticism.
Frequently asked questions
Did Homer really exist?
No one knows. The ancient Greeks believed in a poet called Homer, but there is no reliable information about his life, and some scholars think the name stands for a tradition rather than a person.
What is the difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey?
The Iliad is a war poem, set during the siege of Troy and centred on the anger of Achilles; the Odyssey tells of the adventures and homecoming of Odysseus after the war.
When were the Homeric poems written?
Most scholars date them to the late eighth or the seventh century BC.