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Homer

Also known as Homerus, Homeros, Mæonides

Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an ancient Greek poet who is widely credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Although his life and authorship remain obscure, Homer was highly revered in ancient Greek society and is considered one of the most influential authors in history.

OverviewAI-generated

Homer, known in Ancient Greek as Ὅμηρος, was a male poet, author, and writer from the Greek ethnic group. He was a native speaker of Ancient Greek and is associated with Greek mythology. His birth name is recorded as Ὅμηρος, and he is distinct from Gomer.

Born in 900 BCE, Homer died in 800 BCE at the place of Ios. He is noted for the medical condition of blindness. His notable works include the epic poems Iliad and Odyssey, which fall under the genre of epic poetry.

His works are held in the collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. He is described by sources including the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition, The Nuttall Encyclopædia, and Granat Encyclopedic Dictionary.

Synthesized by Vinony from 26 facts across 3 sources: Wikidata, MusicBrainz, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Key facts

Writer.name: Homer
Writer.image: Homer British Museum.jpg
Writer.caption: Marble terminal bust of Homer. Roman copy of a lost 2nd-century BC Hellenistic original
Writer.native_name: Ὅμηρος
Writer.native_name_lang: grc
Writer.birth_place: Ionia
Writer.death_place: Ios
Writer.genre: Epic
Writer.subject: Epic Cycle

via Wikipedia infobox

~29 min read

Encyclopedic overview

21 sections

Contents

Biography, identity, and biographical traditions
Works attributed to Homer
History of Homeric scholarship
Ancient
Modern
Contemporary
Historicity of the Homeric epics and Homeric society
Style and language
Textual transmission
See also
Citations
Bibliography
Editions
Interlinear translations
English translations
General works on Homer
Influential readings and interpretations
Commentaries
Dating the Homeric poems
Further reading
External links

The 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 epics depict man's struggle, the Odyssey especially so, as Odysseus perseveres through the punishment of the gods. The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language that shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally. Despite being predominantly known for their tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems also contain instances of comedy and laughter.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Homer” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.