Homer

Homer (, Hómēros) is the legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are the central works of ancient Greek literature.

The Iliad (, in Classical Attic; sometimes referred to as the Song of Ilion or Song of Ilium) is an ancient Greek epic poem in dactylic hexameter, traditionally attributed to Homer.

Homer (, Hómēros) is the legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are the central works of ancient Greek literature.

The Odyssey ( Odýsseia, in Classical Attic) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer.

The Iliad is set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek kingdoms.

The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably Homer's Iliad.

It focuses on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles lasting a few weeks during the last year of the war.

In Greek mythology, Achilles or Achilleus was a hero of the Trojan War, the greatest of all the Greek warriors, and is the central character of Homer's Iliad.

The Odyssey focuses on the ten-year journey home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, after the fall of Troy.

Odysseus (, Ὀdysseús ), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses, is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey.

The Iliad is set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek kingdoms.

It was the setting of the Trojan War described in the Greek Epic Cycle, in particular in the Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer.

Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey.

The ancient accounts of Homer include many passages in archaic and classical Greek poets and prose authors that mention or allude to Homer, and ten biographies of Homer, often referred to as Lives.

Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. From antiquity until the present day, the influence of Homeric epic on Western civilization has been great, inspiring many of its most famous works of literature, music, art and film.

Conventionally, it is taken to begin with the earliest-recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer (8th–7th century BC), and continues through the emergence of Christianity and the fall of the Western Roman Empire (5th century AD).

Homer (, Hómēros) is the legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are the central works of ancient Greek literature.

This period of Greek literature stretches from Homer until the fourth century BC and the rise of Alexander the Great.

The Homeric Question – concerning by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed – continues to be debated.

The Homeric Question concerns the doubts and consequent debate over the identity of Homer, the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey, and their historicity (especially concerning the Iliad).

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.

Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey and in the Homeric Hymns.

Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally.

Homer's epic poetry, states Michael Gagarin, was largely composed, performed and transmitted orally.

In antiquity, a very 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.

They were uncritically attributed to Homer himself in antiquity—from the earliest written reference to them, Thucydides (iii.104)—and the label has stuck.

In antiquity, a very 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. The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the Life of Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod.

The Contest of Homer and Hesiod (Greek: Ἀγὼν Oμήρου καὶ Ἡσιόδου, Latin: Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi or simply Certamen ) is a Greek narrative that expands a remark made in Hesiod's Works and Days to construct an imagined poetical agon between Homer and Hesiod.

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.

The works of Homer (The Iliad, The Odyssey, and the Homeric Hymns) and of Hesiod were written in a literary dialect called Homeric Greek or Epic Greek, which largely comprises Old Ionic, with some borrowings from the neighboring Aeolic dialect to the north.

They include that Homer was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bard Demodocus ), that he was born in 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".

Critheïs ( or, ;, occasionally ) was, according to several traditions, the mother of Homer, the poet to whom the Iliad and the Odyssey are attributed.

From antiquity until the present day, the influence of Homeric epic on Western civilization has been great, inspiring many of its most famous works of literature, music, art and film.

Since Homeric literature (the Trojan Wars), through the accounts of the Persian Wars of Greeks against Persians by Herodotus, and right up until the time of Alexander the Great, there was a paradigm of a contrast between Greeks and other civilizations.

In antiquity, a very 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.

The Cyclic Poets, as the translator of Homerica, Hugh G. Evelyn-White noted "were careful not to trespass upon ground already occupied by Homer," one of the reasons for dating the final, literary form of Cypria as post-Homeric, in effect a "prequel".

They include that Homer was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bard Demodocus ), that he was born in 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".

The river Meles (more appropriately described as "Meles Brook") is a stream charged with history and famous in literature, especially by virtue of being associated in a common and consistent tradition with Homer's birth and works, and which flowed by the ancient city of Smyrna, and a namesake of which flows through the present-day metropolitan center of İzmir.

The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the Life of Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod.

The Life of Homer, whose unknown author is referred to as Pseudo-Herodotus, is one among several ancient biographies of the Greek epic poet, Homer.

The Odyssey focuses on the ten-year journey home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, after the fall of Troy.

The epic poems of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, shed some light on Bronze-Age Ithaca.

They include that Homer was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bard Demodocus ), that he was born in 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".

North of Chios Town lies the large suburb of Vrontados (population 4,500), which claims to be the birthplace of Homer.

In antiquity, a very 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.

The author of the Nostoi is uncertain: ancient writers attributed the poem variously to Agias (8th century BC), Homer (8th century BC), and Eumelos (8th century BC) (see Cyclic poets).

In antiquity, a very 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.

The Capture of Oechalia (traditionally The Sack of Oechalia, ) is a fragmentary Greek epic that was variously attributed in Antiquity to either Homer or Creophylus of Samos; a tradition was reported that Homer gave the tale to Creophylus, in gratitude for guest-friendship (xenia), and that Creophylus wrote it down.

Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey.

Moreover, the Achaea of Herodotus' time spoke Doric (Corinthian), but in Homer it is portrayed as being in the kingdom of Mycenae, which most likely spoke Mycenaean Greek, which is not Doric.