Homer (/ˈhoʊmər/; Ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος [hómɛːros], Hómēros) (born c. 8th century BC) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history.[2]
Homer's Iliad centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War. The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, back to his home after the fall of Troy. The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic.[3][4] Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally.[5]
Homer's epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor.[6] To Plato, Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" (τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν, tēn Helláda pepaídeuken).[7][8]In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets;[9] in the preface to his translation of the Iliad, Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets".[10] From antiquity to the present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of literature, music, art, and film.[11]
The question of by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars remain divided as to whether the two works are the product of a single author.[12] It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC.[12]Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity; the most widespread account was that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.[13]
Today, only the Iliad and the Odyssey are associated with the name 'Homer'. In antiquity, a large number of other works were sometimes attributed to him, including the Homeric Hymns, the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, the Little Iliad, the Nostoi, the Thebaid, the Cypria, the Epigoni, the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog-Mouse War"), the Margites, the Capture of Oechalia, and the Phocais. These claims are not considered authentic today and were by no means universally accepted in the ancient world. As with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they indicate little more than the centrality of Homer to ancient Greek culture.[14][15][16]
Some ancient claims about Homer were established early and repeated often. They include that Homer was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bard Demodocus),[17][18] that he resided at Chios, that he was the son of the river Meles and the nymph Critheïs, that he was a wandering bard, that he composed a varying list of other works (the "Homerica"), that he died either in Ios or after failing to solve a riddle set by fishermen, and various explanations for the name "Homer" (Ὅμηρος : Hómēros).[17] Another tradition from the days of the Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste (daughter of Nestor) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus) were the parents of Homer.[19][20]