Literature · Poets

Homer

fl. c. 8th century BC (traditional) · Ancient Greek

Archaic Greek epic poetry; oral tradition

Homer is the name the ancient Greeks gave to the poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two great epics that stand at the head of Western literature. Almost nothing is known of him for certain, and whether a single poet composed both works is the long-running "Homeric Question". The poems, in hexameter verse built from traditional formulas, shaped Greek education, religion and art, and every later epic tradition.

How to spot them

▸The Iliad (wrath of Achilles, Trojan War) and the Odyssey (Odysseus' ten-year voyage home to Ithaca)
▸Traditionally a blind poet whose birthplace was claimed by several cities, notably Chios and Smyrna
▸Stock epithets such as 'rosy-fingered Dawn', 'the wine-dark sea' and 'swift-footed Achilles'
▸The 'Homeric Question' and Milman Parry's theory of oral-formulaic composition

Key works

Iliad (c. 8th century BC)

24 books on the wrath of Achilles in the tenth year of the Trojan War, ending with the funeral of Hector

Odyssey (c. 8th century BC)

24 books on Odysseus' return to Ithaca, his wife Penelope and son Telemachus, and the slaughter of the suitors

Homeric Hymns (c. 7th–6th century BC onwards)

Hymns to the gods in epic style, attributed to Homer in antiquity though not by the same poet

Batrachomyomachia (The Battle of the Frogs and Mice) (Probably Hellenistic)

Mock-epic parody once ascribed to Homer, now regarded as much later

Key ideas

The Homeric Question: were the epics the work of one poet, two, or a long oral tradition later written down?
Milman Parry and Albert Lord showed that repeated formulas and epithets are hallmarks of oral composition
Kleos (undying glory) and nostos (homecoming) are central values of the Iliad and the Odyssey respectively
The epics were the foundation of Greek education; in Plato's Republic, admirers call Homer the poet who educated Greece

Quick-fire facts

•The Iliad opens by asking the goddess (the Muse) to sing of the wrath of Achilles
•In the Odyssey, Odysseus tells the Cyclops Polyphemus that his name is 'Nobody' (Outis)
•Odysseus' old dog Argos recognises him on his return and then dies
•Alexander Pope translated the Iliad (1715–1720) and, with collaborators, the Odyssey
•Keats's sonnet 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer' (1816) celebrates George Chapman's translation
•James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) structures a Dublin day on episodes of the Odyssey
•Each epic was divided into 24 books, one per letter of the Greek alphabet, by later scholars

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Sources

Poetry Foundation — Homer
M. C. Howatson (ed.) — The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature