Homer ( /ˈh oʊ m ər / ; Ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος [hómɛːros], Hómēros ; possibly born around the 8th century BC) was an ancient Greek poet who is widely believed to have written the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are important works in ancient Greek literature. Although details about his life and authorship are unclear, Homer was highly respected in ancient Greek society and is considered one of the most influential writers in history.
The Iliad tells the story of a disagreement between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the final year of the Trojan War. The Odyssey describes the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, as he returns home after the fall of Troy. These poems show people's struggles, especially in the Odyssey, where Odysseus faces challenges caused by the gods. The poems are written in Homeric Greek, also called Epic Greek, a special language that combines features from the Ionic and Aeolic dialects of ancient Greek. The main influence comes from the Eastern Ionic dialect. Most researchers believe the poems were originally shared through spoken word. Although the poems are mostly known for their serious and tragic themes, they also include moments of humor and laughter.
The Homeric poems influenced many aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, promoting values like bravery, honor, and glory. Plato said Homer "has educated Greece" (τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν, tēn Helláda pepaídeuken). In Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, Virgil calls Homer "Poet sovereign," the greatest of all poets. In the preface to his translation of the Iliad, Alexander Pope notes that Homer has always been seen as "the greatest of poets." From ancient times to today, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works in literature, music, art, and film.
Scholars continue to debate who wrote the Iliad and Odyssey, when they were written, where, and under what conditions. Most experts believe the two poems were created by different authors. It is thought the poems were written around the late 8th or early 7th century BC. Ancient stories often described Homer as a blind bard from Ionia, a region that included parts of modern-day Turkey and the Greek islands of Chios and Samos. However, modern scholars believe these stories are legendary.
Biography, identity, and biographical traditions
The identity of "Homer" remains unknown, and many scholars believe the idea of a single person writing both the Iliad and the Odyssey is a story created later. In ancient times, people added many myths about Homer’s life because no one knew who he was. Some believed he lived after the Trojan War. Today, experts study Homer’s life along with the "Homeric Question," which is an ongoing debate about who wrote the poems, how they were created, and how they were passed down. The two most famous ancient accounts of Homer’s life are the Life of Homer by Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod.
The earliest known mentions of Homer from the 7th century BC appear in works by Archilochus, Alcman, Tyrtaeus, and Callinus. In many ancient stories, Homer is described as blind. Other accounts, like one in the Byzantine encyclopedia Suda, say he was descended from a Muse, Apollo, Orpheus, Thamyris, Telemachus, or Musaeus. A tradition from the time of the Roman emperor Hadrian claims Homer was the son of Epicaste (daughter of Nestor) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus). The poet Pindar wrote that Homer came from Chios and Smyrna, places also mentioned by other writers from the fifth century BC. Some stories say Homer was a rhapsode or singer who performed at religious festivals, a wandering bard, a composer of other works (the "Homerica"), or someone who failed to solve a riddle set by fishermen. According to the Greek historian Ephorus, Homer studied poetry with the bard Phemius and was born in Cyme. Another writer, Philochorus, thought Homer was born in Argos; later writers believed Pylos or Athens were his birthplace. No single story about Homer’s origins became widely accepted, but most accounts say he died on the island of Ios.
Works attributed to Homer
Today, only the Iliad and the Odyssey are connected to the name "Homer." In ancient times, many other works were sometimes credited to him, such as the Homeric Hymns, the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, several epigrams, 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 works are not considered genuine today and were not always accepted as Homer's in the ancient world. Just as many stories exist about Homer's life, these claims show how important Homer was to ancient Greek culture.
History of Homeric scholarship
The study of Homer is one of the oldest subjects in scholarship, with records dating back to ancient times. Over many centuries, the goals of Homeric studies have changed. The earliest known comments about Homer focused on how he portrayed the gods. Some critics, like the poet Xenophanes of Colophon, criticized Homer for what they saw as immoral behavior by the gods in his works. Another figure, Theagenes of Rhegium, defended Homer by saying the poems were allegories, or stories with hidden meanings. In ancient Greece and the Hellenistic period, The Iliad and The Odyssey were widely used as school texts. These works were the first literary pieces taught to all students. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, The Iliad, especially its first few books, was studied more closely than The Odyssey.
Because of the poems’ importance in education, many scholars wrote detailed commentaries to explain parts that were hard to understand. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many interpreters, especially the Stoics, believed the Homeric poems contained hidden wisdom and were allegories. Because of their use in education, many people thought Homer’s original goal was to teach. Over time, Homer was praised so highly that he was seen as almost like a philosopher. In the 12th century, Byzantine scholars like Eustathius of Thessalonica and John Tzetzes wrote commentaries, additions, and notes about Homer. Eustathius’s commentary on The Iliad alone is extremely long, taking up nearly 4,000 oversized pages in a modern printed version, with another nearly 2,000 pages for The Odyssey.
In 1488, the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published the first printed version of the Homeric poems in Florence. Early modern scholars studied the poems in ways similar to ancient scholars. During the Renaissance, allegorical interpretations of the Homeric poems became popular again. Renaissance humanists saw Homer as a wise poet whose works contained hidden wisdom, hidden through allegory. In Western Europe during the Renaissance, Virgil was more widely read than Homer, and Homer was often compared to Virgil.
In 1664, the French scholar François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac, strongly criticized the Homeric poems, calling them incoherent, immoral, and lacking style. He also claimed Homer never existed and that the poems were made by combining unrelated oral songs. Fifty years later, the English scholar Richard Bentley argued that Homer did exist but was a simple, ancient poet whose works were later changed by others. Bentley believed the poems were originally short songs written for festivals and were later combined into The Iliad and The Odyssey around 500 years after Homer’s time.
In 1744, Giambattista Vico studied Homer and other ancient writings in his book The New Science. He concluded that Homer was not one person but a collection of writers or an idea representing ancient Greek culture. Vico wrote that Homer was "an ideal poet who never existed as a real person" and that "Homer was an idea or a heroic character of Grecian men."
In 1795, Friedrich August Wolf wrote Prolegomena ad Homerum, arguing that the material in The Iliad and The Odyssey was originally composed as short, separate oral songs around the 10th century BC. These songs were passed down through oral tradition for about 400 years before being written down and edited into the versions of the poems we know today. Wolf and the "Analyst" school of scholars believed the original, authentic poems were hidden by later changes.
Within the Analyst school, there were two groups: one believed the poems were made from many short, independent songs, and the other thought Homer originally wrote shorter versions of the poems that were later expanded. A smaller group of scholars, called "Unitarians," believed the later additions were better and the work of a single poet. By 1830, scholars were focused on questions about whether Homer existed, when and how the poems were created, how they were passed down, and whether they were unified works. These questions became known as "the Homeric Question."
After World War I, the Analyst school became less popular. However, it did not disappear entirely. In 1928, Milman Parry and Albert Lord studied folk bards in the Balkans and developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory." This theory explained that the Homeric poems were originally created through oral performances that used traditional phrases and repeated patterns. This idea helped scholars understand puzzling features of the poems, such as their archaic language and repeated phrases. Many scholars believed this theory answered "the Homeric Question."
At the same time, "Neoanalysts" tried to find a middle ground between the Analysts and Unitarians. They studied how the Homeric poems might relate to other lost epic poems. They believed differences in the surviving versions of The Iliad and The Odyssey could show earlier versions of the poems. For example, they thought earlier versions of The Iliad had a more important role for Ajax, different characters in the Achaean embassy to Achilles, and a scene where Patroclus was mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They also believed earlier versions of The Odyssey had different details, such as Telemachus seeking news of his father in Crete instead of Sparta, and Penelope recognizing Odysseus earlier in the story. Neoanalysts reconstructed lost poems as sources for the Homeric works, but recent studies have focused on how the poems used shared mythological traditions.
Most modern scholars agree that The Iliad and The Odyssey were not written by the same author, based on differences in style, theology, vocabulary, and perspective. They also note that some parts of The Odyssey imitate scenes from The Iliad. Nearly all scholars agree that the two poems were created by different authors.
Historicity of the Homeric epics and Homeric society
Scholars still discuss questions like whether the Trojan War happened, and if it did, when and where. They also debate how much the society described by Homer in his poems reflects real life or if it was based on legends known at the time the poems were written. The Homeric epics mainly take place in the eastern and central parts of the Mediterranean Sea, with some mentions of places like Egypt and Ethiopia. These stories describe a warlike society similar to the Greek world just before the estimated time the poems were written.
In ancient Greek history, the fall of Troy was thought to happen in 1184 BC. By the 1800s, many scholars doubted that the Trojan War ever happened or that Troy existed. However, in 1873, Heinrich Schliemann claimed to have found the ruins of Homer's Troy at a site called Hisarlik in modern-day Turkey. Some scholars believe the destruction of Troy VIIa around 1220 BC inspired the myth of the Trojan War, while others think the story was influenced by several similar battles that occurred over time.
Most scholars now agree that the Homeric poems include customs and details from different periods in Greek history. For example, the heroes in the poems use bronze weapons, which were common during the Bronze Age when the poems are set, not the Iron Age when they were written. However, the heroes are cremated, a practice from the Iron Age, rather than buried, which was typical in the Bronze Age. In some parts of the poems, heroes carry large shields like those used by warriors during the Mycenaean period, but in other parts, they are described as carrying smaller shields that were common during the early Iron Age when the poems were written.
In the Iliad 10.260–265, Odysseus is described as wearing a helmet made of boar's tusks. These helmets were not used in Homer's time but were worn by aristocratic warriors between 1600 and 1150 BC.
The discovery of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris and ongoing archaeological work have helped scholars better understand the Bronze Age Aegean civilization. This civilization shares many similarities with the ancient Near East, which is different from the society described by Homer. Some parts of the Homeric world are fictional. For example, in Iliad 22.145–56, two springs are described near Troy—one hot and one cold—where Hector fights Achilles. However, archaeologists have found no evidence that such springs ever existed.
Style and language
The Homeric epics are written in a special kind of language called "Kunstsprache," which was only used in epic poetry written in a specific meter called hexameter. Homeric Greek includes features from different Greek dialects and time periods, but it mainly uses the Ionic Greek language, which matches the belief that Homer was from Ionia. Linguistic studies suggest the Iliad was written slightly before the Odyssey, and certain repeated phrases in the poems, called Homeric formulae, show older language features than other parts of the texts.
The poems use a type of meter called dactylic hexameter, which is based on the length of syllables rather than the stress of words. Homer often uses repeated phrases, such as special names for characters ("crafty Odysseus," "rosy-fingered Dawn," "owl-eyed Athena") and set expressions like "and then answered [him/her], Agamemnon, king of men" or "when the early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light." These include similes, repeated scenes, ring composition, and repetition. These techniques help a singer who creates poetry on the spot and are common in oral poetry. For example, the main words in a Homeric sentence are usually placed at the beginning, while poets who write texts, like Virgil or Milton, use longer and more complex sentence structures. Homer then adds more details in later parts of the sentences, a method called parataxis.
The term "type scenes" was introduced by Walter Arend in 1933 to describe how Homer often used repeated blocks of phrases when describing common actions, such as eating, praying, fighting, or dressing. These phrases were then expanded by the poet. Some scholars once thought these repetitions were not typical of Homer, but Arend saw them as meaningful. Later researchers, like Parry and Lord, found similar patterns in other cultures' oral traditions.
"Ring composition," or chiastic structure, is a pattern where a phrase or idea appears at both the beginning and end of a story, or in a sequence that is reversed (A, B, C… then C, B, A). This pattern is found in the Homeric epics. Scholars disagree on whether this was a deliberate artistic choice, a memory aid, or a natural part of storytelling.
Both the Iliad and the Odyssey begin with a request to the Muse, a goddess of inspiration. In the Iliad, the poet asks the Muse to sing about "the anger of Achilles," and in the Odyssey, the poet asks her to tell the story of "the man of many ways." A similar opening was later used by Virgil in his poem Aeneid.
Textual transmission
The Homeric poems, which were originally passed down by speaking, were written down sometime between the 8th and 6th centuries BC. Some scholars think the poems were spoken aloud by a poet and then written by a scribe. Albert Lord studied Balkan bards and found that they changed and added to their songs while dictating them. Some scholars suggest a similar process may have happened when the Homeric poems were first written.
Other scholars believe the poems were created in the 8th century and continued to be spoken and revised for many years before being written down in the 6th century. After being written, the poems were divided into 24 parts, now called books, and labeled with Greek letters. Most scholars think the division into books was done by scholars in Alexandria, Egypt, during the Hellenistic period. Some believe the division dates back to the Classical period. Very few scholars think Homer himself created the divisions.
In ancient times, it was widely believed that the Homeric poems were collected and organized in Athens in the late 6th century BC by Pisistratus. This event is called the "Peisistratean recension" by later scholars. This idea is mentioned by Cicero, a Roman orator from the first century BC, and in other ancient writings about Homer. Around 150 BC, copies of the Homeric poems found on papyrus show less variation, suggesting the text became more stable. After the Library of Alexandria was built, scholars like Zenodotus, Aristophanes, and Aristarchus helped create a standard version of the poems.
The first printed version of Homer’s works appeared in 1488 in Milan, Italy, by Demetrios Chalkokondyles. Today, scholars use medieval manuscripts, papyrus, and other sources to study the poems. Some scholars argue that there is not one single correct version of the text but many different versions. The 19th-century edition by Arthur Ludwich mainly follows the work of Aristarchus. Other editions, like those by van Thiel (1991, 1996), follow the medieval version called the vulgate. Scholars like Martin West (1998–2000) and T. W. Allen take a middle ground between these views.