Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''
Iliad
The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the '' Odys ...
'' and the ''
Odyssey
The ''Odyssey'' (; grc, Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia, ) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Iliad'', th ...
'', two
epic poem
An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants.
...
s that are foundational works of
ancient Greek literature
Ancient Greek literature is literature written in the Ancient Greek language from the earliest texts until the time of the Byzantine Empire. The earliest surviving works of ancient Greek literature, dating back to the early Archaic period, are ...
. Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history.
Homer's ''Iliad'' centers on a quarrel between King
Agamemnon
In Greek mythology, Agamemnon (; grc-gre, Ἀγαμέμνων ''Agamémnōn'') was a king of Mycenae who commanded the Greeks during the Trojan War. He was the son, or grandson, of King Atreus and Queen Aerope, the brother of Menelaus, the ...
and the warrior
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles ( ) or Achilleus ( grc-gre, Ἀχιλλεύς) was a hero of the Trojan War, the greatest of all the Greek warriors, and the central character of Homer's '' Iliad''. He was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Pele ...
during the last year of the
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and ...
. The ''Odyssey'' chronicles the ten-year journey of
Odysseus, king of
Ithaca
Ithaca most commonly refers to:
*Homer's Ithaca, an island featured in Homer's ''Odyssey''
*Ithaca (island), an island in Greece, possibly Homer's Ithaca
*Ithaca, New York, a city, and home of Cornell University and Ithaca College
Ithaca, Ithaka ...
, back to his home after the fall of Troy. The poems are in
Homeric Greek
Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used by Homer in the ''Iliad'', ''Odyssey'', and Homeric Hymns. It is a literary dialect of Ancient Greek consisting mainly of Ionic, with some Aeolic forms, a few from Arcadocypriot, and ...
, also known as Epic Greek, a
literary language
A literary language is the form (register) of a language used in written literature, which can be either a nonstandard dialect or a standardized variety of the language. Literary language sometimes is noticeably different from the spoken langua ...
which shows a mixture of features of the
Ionic and
Aeolic
In linguistics, Aeolic Greek (), also known as Aeolian (), Lesbian or Lesbic dialect, is the set of dialects of Ancient Greek spoken mainly in Boeotia; in Thessaly; in the Aegean island of Lesbos; and in the Greek colonies of Aeolis in Anato ...
dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally
transmitted orally.
Homer's epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor. To
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
, Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" (τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν, ''tēn Helláda pepaídeuken'').
In
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: '' ...
's ''
Divine Comedy
The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature ...
'',
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...
refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets; in the preface to his translation of the ''Iliad'',
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...
acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets". From antiquity to present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of literature, music, art, and film.
The question of by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' were composed continues to be debated. It is generally accepted that the two works were written by different authors.
It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC.
Many
accounts of Homer's life circulated in
classical antiquity
Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD centred on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ...
; the most widespread account was that he was a blind
bard from
Ionia, a region of central coastal
Anatolia
Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The ...
in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts
legend
A legend is a genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived, both by teller and listeners, to have taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre may demonstrate human values, and possess ...
ary.
[
*
*
* ]
Works attributed to Homer
![William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Homer and his Guide (1874)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_%281825-1905%29_-_Homer_and_his_Guide_%281874%29.jpg)
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 ''Homeric Hymns'' () are a collection of thirty-three anonymous ancient Greek hymns celebrating individual gods. The hymns are "Homeric" in the sense that they employ the same epic meter— dactylic hexameter—as the ''Iliad'' and '' Odyssey' ...
'', 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 construc ...
'', the ''
Little Iliad
The ''Little Iliad'' (Greek: , ''Ilias mikra''; la, parva Illias) is a lost epic of ancient Greek literature. It was one of the Epic Cycle, that is, the Trojan cycle, which told the entire history of the Trojan War in epic verse. The story of t ...
'', the ''
Nostoi
The ''Nostoi'' ( el, Νόστοι, ''Nostoi'', "Returns"), also known as ''Returns'' or ''Returns of the Greeks'', is a lost epic of ancient Greek literature. It was one of the Epic Cycle, that is, the Trojan cycle, which told the entire history ...
'', the ''
Thebaid
The Thebaid or Thebais ( grc-gre, Θηβαΐς, ''Thēbaïs'') was a region in ancient Egypt, comprising the 13 southernmost nomes of Upper Egypt, from Abydos to Aswan.
Pharaonic history
The Thebaid acquired its name from its proximity to ...
'', the ''
Cypria
The ''Cypria'' (; grc-gre, Κύπρια ''Kúpria''; Latin: ''Cypria'') is a lost epic poem of ancient Greek literature, which has been attributed to Stasinus and was quite well known in classical antiquity and fixed in a received text, but which ...
'', the ''
Epigoni
In Greek mythology, the Epigoni or Epigonoi (; from grc-gre, Ἐπίγονοι, meaning "offspring") are the sons of the Argive heroes, the Seven against Thebes, who had fought and been killed in the first Theban war, the subject of the '' Theb ...
'', the comic mini-epic ''
Batrachomyomachia
The ''Batrachomyomachia'' ( grc, Βατραχομυομαχία, from , "frog", , "mouse", and , "battle") or ''Battle of the Frogs and Mice'' is a comic epic, or a parody of the ''Iliad'', commonly attributed to Homer, although other authors ha ...
'' ("The Frog-Mouse War"), the ''
Margites
The ''Margites'' ( grc-gre, Μαργίτης) is a comic mock-epic ascribed to Homer that is largely lost. From references to the work that survived, it is known that its central character is an exceedingly stupid man named Margites (from ancient ...
'', the ''
Capture of Oechalia
''The Capture of Oechalia'' (traditionally ''The Sack of Oechalia'', grc, Οἰχαλίας Ἅλωσις) is a fragmentary Greek epic that was variously attributed in Antiquity to either Homer or Creophylus of Samos; a tradition was reported t ...
'', and the ''
Phocais
The ''Phocais'' ( grc-gre, Φωκαΐς) was an ancient Greek epic attributed to Homer. In the ''Life of Homer'', a biography of Homer falsely attributed to Herodotus, it was said to have been written while Homer lived at Phocaea
Phocaea or Pho ...
''. 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.
Ancient biographical traditions
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), that he resided at
Chios
Chios (; el, Χίος, Chíos , traditionally known as Scio in English) is the fifth largest Greek island, situated in the northern Aegean Sea. The island is separated from Turkey by the Chios Strait. Chios is notable for its exports of masti ...
, that he was the son of the
river Meles
The river Meles ( el, Μέλης) (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 the nymph
Critheïs Critheïs ( or , ; grc, Κριθηΐς, Kritheïs, occasionally grc, Κρηθηϊς, Kretheïs) was, according to several traditions, the mother of Homer, the poet to whom the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'' are attributed.''PW'', ''s. v. Kritheis'' ...
, that he was a wandering bard, that he composed a varying list of other works (the "Homerica"), that he died either in
Ios
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...
or after failing to solve a riddle set by fishermen, and various explanations for the name "Homer" (Ὅμηρος : Hómēros).
The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the ''
Life of Homer
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. It is distinguished from the others by the fact that it contains, in its first lines, the claim ...
'' 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 construc ...
''.
In the early fourth century BC
Alcidamas
Alcidamas ( grc-gre, Ἀλκιδάμας), of Elaea, in Aeolis, was a Greek sophist and rhetorician, who flourished in the 4th century BC.
Life
He was the pupil and successor of Gorgias and taught at Athens at the same time as Isocrates, to wh ...
composed a fictional account of a poetry contest at Chalcis with both Homer and
Hesiod
Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet ...
. Homer was expected to win, and answered all of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. Then, each of the poets was invited to recite the best passage from their work. Hesiod selected the beginning of ''
Works and Days
''Works and Days'' ( grc, Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι, Érga kaì Hēmérai)The ''Works and Days'' is sometimes called by the Latin translation of the title, ''Opera et Dies''. Common abbreviations are ''WD'' and ''Op''. for ''Opera''. is a ...
'': "When the
Pleiades
The Pleiades (), also known as The Seven Sisters, Messier 45 and other names by different cultures, is an asterism and an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the north-west of the constellation Taurus. At a distance ...
born of
Atlas
An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth.
Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geograp ...
... all in due season". Homer chose a description of Greek warriors in formation, facing the foe, taken from the ''
Iliad
The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the '' Odys ...
''. Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor, the judge awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who praised
husbandry
Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, fibre, milk, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, selective breeding, and the raising of livestock. Husbandry has a long history, startin ...
, he said, was greater than the one who told tales of battles and slaughter.
History of Homeric scholarship
Ancient
![Townley Homer](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Townley_Homer.jpg)
The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity.
Nonetheless, the aims of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia.
The earliest preserved comments on Homer concern his treatment of the gods, which hostile critics such as the poet
Xenophanes of Colophon
Xenophanes of Colophon (; grc, Ξενοφάνης ὁ Κολοφώνιος ; c. 570 – c. 478 BC) was a Greek philosopher, theologian, poet, and critic of Homer from Ionia who travelled throughout the Greek-speaking world in early Classical An ...
denounced as immoral.
The allegorist
Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems are
allegories
As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory th ...
.
The ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'' were widely used as school texts in ancient Greek and Hellenistic cultures.
They were the first literary works taught to all students.
The ''Iliad'', particularly its first few books, was far more intently studied than the ''Odyssey'' during the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
As a result of the poems' prominence in classical Greek education, extensive commentaries on them developed to explain parts that were culturally or linguistically difficult.
During the
Hellenistic
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...
and Roman periods, many interpreters, especially the
Stoics, who believed that Homeric poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, regarded them as allegories, containing hidden wisdom.
Perhaps partially because of the Homeric poems' extensive use in education, many authors believed that Homer's original purpose had been to educate.
Homer's wisdom became so widely praised that he began to acquire the image of almost a prototypical philosopher.
Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
scholars such as
Eustathius of Thessalonica
Eustathius of Thessalonica (or Eustathios of Thessalonike; el, Εὐστάθιος Θεσσαλονίκης; c. 1115 – 1195/6) was a Byzantine Greek scholar and Archbishop of Thessalonica. He is most noted for his contemporary account of the ...
and
John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions and
scholia
Scholia (singular scholium or scholion, from grc, σχόλιον, "comment, interpretation") are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of t ...
to Homer, especially in the twelfth century.
Eustathius's commentary on the ''Iliad'' alone is massive, sprawling over nearly 4,000 oversized pages in a twenty-first century printed version and his commentary on the ''Odyssey'' an additional nearly 2,000.
Modern
![Nuremberg chronicles f 043r 1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Nuremberg_chronicles_f_043r_1.png)
In 1488, the Greek scholar
Demetrios Chalkokondyles
Demetrios Chalkokondyles ( el, Δημήτριος Χαλκοκονδύλης ), Latinized as Demetrius Chalcocondyles and found variously as Demetricocondyles, Chalcocondylas or Chalcondyles (14239 January 1511) was one of the most eminent Gree ...
published the ''
editio princeps'' of the Homeric poems.
The earliest modern Homeric scholars started with the same basic approaches towards the Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity.
The allegorical interpretation of the Homeric poems that had been so prevalent in antiquity returned to become the prevailing view of the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...
.
Renaissance humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise poet, whose writings contain hidden wisdom, disguised through allegory.
In western Europe during the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...
,
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...
was more widely read than Homer and Homer was often seen through a Virgilian lens.
In 1664, contradicting the widespread praise of Homer as the epitome of wisdom,
François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac
François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac (4 August 1604 in Paris – 27 July 1676) was a French author and cleric.
The father of François Hédelin was Claude Hédelin, a lawyer at the Parliament, and his mother Catherine Paré, the daughter of the ...
wrote a scathing attack on the Homeric poems, declaring that they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, and without style, that Homer never existed, and that the poems were hastily cobbled together by incompetent editors from unrelated oral songs.
Fifty years later, the English scholar
Richard Bentley concluded that Homer did exist, but that he was an obscure, prehistoric oral poet whose compositions bear little relation to the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'' as they have been passed down.
According to Bentley, Homer "wrote a Sequel of Songs and Rhapsodies, to be sung by himself for small Earnings and good Cheer at Festivals and other Days of Merriment; the ''Ilias'' he wrote for men, and the ''Odysseis'' for the other Sex. These loose songs were not collected together in the Form of an epic Poem till
Pisistratus' time, about 500 Years after."
Friedrich August Wolf
Friedrich August Wolf (; 15 February 1759 – 8 August 1824) was a German classicist and is considered the founder of modern philology.
Biography
He was born in Hainrode, near Nordhausen. His father was the village schoolmaster and organi ...
's ''Prolegomena ad Homerum'', published in 1795, argued that much of the material later incorporated into the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'' was originally composed in the tenth century BC in the form of short, separate oral songs,
which passed through oral tradition for roughly four hundred years before being assembled into prototypical versions of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'' in the sixth century BC by literate authors.
After being written down, Wolf maintained that the two poems were extensively edited, modernized, and eventually shaped into their present state as artistic unities.
Wolf and the "Analyst" school, which led the field in the nineteenth century, sought to recover the original, authentic poems which were thought to be concealed by later excrescences.
Within the Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held that the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'' were put together from a large number of short, independent songs,
and proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held that Homer had originally composed shorter versions of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', which later poets expanded and revised.
A small group of scholars opposed to the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw the later additions as superior, the work of a single inspired poet.
By around 1830, the central preoccupations of Homeric scholars, dealing with whether or not "Homer" actually existed, when and how the Homeric poems originated, how they were transmitted, when and how they were finally written down, and their overall unity, had been dubbed "the Homeric Question".
Following
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, the Analyst school began to fall out of favor among Homeric scholars.
It did not die out entirely, but it came to be increasingly seen as a discredited dead end.
Starting in around 1928,
Milman Parry
Milman Parry (June 23, 1902 – December 3, 1935) was an American Classicist whose theories on the origin of Homer's works have revolutionized Homeric studies to such a fundamental degree that he has been described as the " Darwin of Homeric ...
and
Albert Lord
Albert Bates Lord (15 September 1912 – 29 July 1991) was a professor of Slavic and comparative literature at Harvard University who, after the death of his mentor Milman Parry, carried on Parry's research on epic poetry.
Early life
Lord was bor ...
, after their studies of folk bards in the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" that the Homeric poems were originally composed through improvised oral performances, which relied on traditional epithets and poetic formulas.
This theory found very wide scholarly acceptance
and explained many previously puzzling features of the Homeric poems, including their unusually archaic language, their extensive use of stock epithets, and their other "repetitive" features.
Many scholars concluded that the "Homeric question" had finally been answered.
Meanwhile, the 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge the gap between the 'Analysts' and 'Unitarians'. The Neoanalysts sought to trace the relationships between the Homeric poems and other epic poems, which have now been lost, but of which modern scholars do possess some patchy knowledge.
Neoanalysts hold that knowledge of earlier versions of the epics can be derived from anomalies of structure and detail in the surviving versions of the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey''. These anomalies point to earlier versions of the ''Iliad'' in which Ajax played a more prominent role, in which the Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different characters, and in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They point to earlier versions of the ''Odyssey'' in which Telemachus went in search of news of his father not to Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Crete, in which Telemachus met up with his father in Crete and conspired with him to return to Ithaca disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, and in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier in the narrative and conspired with him in the destruction of the suitors.
Contemporary
Most contemporary scholars, although they disagree on other questions about the genesis of the poems, agree that the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'' were not produced by the same author, based on "the many differences of narrative manner, theology, ethics, vocabulary, and geographical perspective, and by the apparently imitative character of certain passages of the ''Odyssey'' in relation to the ''Iliad''."
Nearly all scholars agree that the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'' are unified poems, in that each poem shows a clear overall design, and that they are not merely strung together from unrelated songs.
It is also generally agreed that each poem was composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions.
Nearly all scholars agree that the ''Doloneia'' in Book X of the ''Iliad'' is not part of the original poem, but rather a later insertion by a different poet.
Some ancient scholars believed Homer to have been an eyewitness to the
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and ...
; others thought he had lived up to 500 years afterwards. Contemporary scholars continue to debate the date of the poems.
A long history of oral transmission lies behind the composition of the poems, complicating the search for a precise date. At one extreme,
Richard Janko
Richard Charles Murray Janko (born May 30, 1955) is an Anglo-American classical scholar and the Gerald Else, Gerald F. Else Distinguished University Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan. has proposed a date for both poems to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics.
Barry B. Powell
Barry Bruce Powell (born 1942) is an American classical scholar. He is the Halls-Bascom Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, author of the widely used textbook ''Classical Myth'' and many other books. Trained at ...
dates the composition of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'' to sometime between 800 and 750 BC, based on the statement from
Herodotus
Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer
A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society ...
, who lived in the late fifth century BC, that Homer lived four hundred years before his own time "and not more" (καὶ οὐ πλέοσι), and on the fact that the poems do not mention
hoplite battle tactics,
inhumation
Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objec ...
, or literacy.
Martin Litchfield West
Martin Litchfield West, (23 September 1937 – 13 July 2015) was a British philologist and classical scholar. In recognition of his contribution to scholarship, he was awarded the Order of Merit in 2014.
West wrote on ancient Greek music, Gr ...
has argued that the ''Iliad'' echoes the poetry of
Hesiod
Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet ...
, and that it must have been composed around 660–650 BC at the earliest, with the ''Odyssey'' up to a generation later.
He also interprets passages in the ''Iliad'' as showing knowledge of historical events that occurred in the ancient Near East during the middle of the seventh century BC, including the destruction of
Babylon by
Sennacherib
Sennacherib ( Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: or , meaning " Sîn has replaced the brothers") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Sargon II in 705BC to his own death in 681BC. The second king of the Sargonid dynas ...
in 689 BC and the
Sack of Thebes
The Sack of Thebes took place in 663 BC in the city of Thebes at the hands of the Neo-Assyrian Empire under king Ashurbanipal, then at war with the Kushite Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt under Tantamani, during the Assyrian conquest of Egypt. Af ...
by
Ashurbanipal in 663/4 BC.
At the other extreme, a few American scholars such as
Gregory Nagy
Gregory Nagy ( hu, Nagy Gergely, ; born October 22, 1942 in Budapest)["CV: Gregory Nagy"](_blank)
''gr ...
see "Homer" as a continually evolving tradition, which grew much more stable as the tradition progressed, but which did not fully cease to continue changing and evolving until as late as the middle of the second century BC.
"'Homer" is a name of unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected in antiquity. One such linkage was to the Greek (''hómēros''), "hostage" (or "surety"). The explanations suggested by modern scholars tend to mirror their position on the overall Homeric question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both possible Greek and Phoenician etymologies.
Historicity of the Homeric epics and Homeric society
![Homeric Greece](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Homeric_Greece-en.svg)
Scholars continue to debate questions such as whether the Trojan War actually took place – and if so when and where – and to what extent the society depicted by Homer is based on his own or one which was, even at the time of the poems' composition, known only as legends. The Homeric epics are largely set in the east and center of the
Mediterranean
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western Europe, Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa ...
, with some scattered references to
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
,
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
and other distant lands, in a warlike society that resembles that of the Greek world slightly before the hypothesized date of the poems' composition.
In ancient Greek chronology, the sack of Troy was dated to 1184 BC. By the nineteenth century, there was widespread scholarly skepticism that the Trojan War had ever happened and that Troy had even existed, but in 1873
Heinrich Schliemann
Johann Ludwig Heinrich Julius Schliemann (; 6 January 1822 – 26 December 1890) was a German businessman and pioneer in the field of archaeology. He was an advocate of the historicity of places mentioned in the works of Homer and an archaeolog ...
announced to the world that he had discovered the ruins of Homer's Troy at
Hissarlik
Hisarlik ( Turkish: ''Hisarlık'', "Place of Fortresses"), often spelled Hissarlik, is the Turkish name for an ancient city located in what is known historically as Anatolia.A compound of the noun, hisar, "fortification," and the suffix -lik. The ...
in modern Turkey. Some contemporary scholars think the destruction of
Troy VIIa
Troy in the Late Bronze Age was a thriving coastal city consisting of a steep fortified citadel and a sprawling lower town below it. It had a considerable population and extensive foreign contacts, including with Mycenaean Greece. Geographic and li ...
1220 BC was the origin of the myth of the Trojan War, others that the poem was inspired by multiple similar sieges that took place over the centuries.
Most scholars now agree that the Homeric poems depict customs and elements of the material world that are derived from different periods of Greek history.
For instance, the heroes in the poems use bronze weapons, characteristic of the
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...
in which the poems are set, rather than the later
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...
during which they were composed;
yet the same heroes are cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than buried (as they were in the Bronze Age).
In some parts of the Homeric poems, heroes are described as carrying large shields like those used by warriors during the
Mycenaean period
Mycenaean Greece (or the Mycenaean civilization) was the last phase of the Bronze Age in Ancient Greece, spanning the period from approximately 1750 to 1050 BC.. It represents the first advanced and distinctively Greek civilization in mainland ...
,
but, in other places, they are instead described carrying the smaller shields that were commonly used during the time when the poems were written in the early Iron Age.
In the ''Iliad'' 10.260–265, Odysseus is described as wearing a
helmet made of boar's tusks. Such helmets were not worn in Homer's time, but were commonly worn by aristocratic warriors between 1600 and 1150 BC.
The decipherment of
Linear B in the 1950s by
Michael Ventris
Michael George Francis Ventris, (; 12 July 1922 – 6 September 1956) was an English architect, classicist and philologist who deciphered Linear B, the ancient Mycenaean Greek script. A student of languages, Ventris had pursued deciphermen ...
and continued archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding of
Aegean civilisation
Aegean civilization is a general term for the Bronze Age civilizations of Greece around the Aegean Sea. There are three distinct but communicating and interacting geographic regions covered by this term: Crete, the Cyclades and the Greek mainland ...
, which in many ways resembles the ancient Near East more than the society described by Homer. Some aspects of the Homeric world are simply made up;
for instance, the ''Iliad'' 22.145–56 describes there being two springs that run near the city of Troy, one that runs steaming hot and the other that runs icy cold.
It is here that Hector takes his final stand against Achilles.
Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence that springs of this description ever actually existed.
Style and language
![Cropped image of Homer from Raphael's Parnassus](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Cropped_image_of_Homer_from_Raphael%27s_Parnassus.jpg)
The Homeric epics are written in an artificial
literary language
A literary language is the form (register) of a language used in written literature, which can be either a nonstandard dialect or a standardized variety of the language. Literary language sometimes is noticeably different from the spoken langua ...
or 'Kunstsprache' only used in epic
hexameter
Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It w ...
poetry. Homeric Greek shows features of multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but is fundamentally based on
Ionic Greek, in keeping with the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests that the ''Iliad'' was composed slightly before the ''Odyssey'', and that Homeric formulae preserve older features than other parts of the poems.
The poems were composed in unrhymed
dactylic hexameter
Dactylic hexameter (also known as heroic hexameter and the meter of epic) is a form of meter or rhythmic scheme frequently used in Ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The scheme of the hexameter is usually as follows (writing – for a long syllable ...
; ancient Greek
metre
The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefi ...
was quantity-based rather than stress-based. Homer frequently uses set phrases such as
epithets
An epithet (, ), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, di ...
('crafty
Odysseus', 'rosy-fingered
Dawn
Dawn is the time that marks the beginning of twilight before sunrise. It is recognized by the appearance of indirect sunlight being scattered in Earth's atmosphere, when the centre of the Sun's disc has reached 18° below the observer's hori ...
', 'owl-eyed
Athena
Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft who was later syncretism, syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarded ...
', etc.), Homeric formulae ('and then answered
im/her Agamemnon, king of men', 'when the early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light', 'thus he/she spoke'),
simile
A simile () is a figure of speech that directly ''compares'' two things. Similes differ from other metaphors by highlighting the similarities between two things using comparison words such as "like", "as", "so", or "than", while other metaphors c ...
, type scenes, ring composition and repetition. These habits aid the extemporizing bard, and are characteristic of oral poetry. For instance, the main words of a Homeric sentence are generally placed towards the beginning, whereas literate poets like
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...
or
Milton use longer and more complicated syntactical structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique is called
parataxis.
The so-called '
type scene A type scene is a literary convention employed by a narrator across a set of scenes, or related to scenes (place, action) already familiar to the audience. The similarities with, and differences from, the established type are used to illuminate deve ...
s' (''typische Szenen''), were named by
Walter Arend in 1933. He noted that Homer often, when describing frequently recurring activities such as eating,
praying, fighting and dressing, used blocks of set phrases in sequence that were then elaborated by the poet. The 'Analyst' school had considered these repetitions as un-Homeric, whereas Arend interpreted them philosophically. Parry and Lord noted that these conventions are found in many other cultures.
'Ring composition' or
chiastic structure
Chiastic structure, or chiastic pattern, is a literary technique in narrative motifs and other textual passages. An example of chiastic structure would be two ideas, A and B, together with variants A' and B', being presented as A,B,B',A'. Chia ...
(when a phrase or idea is repeated at both the beginning and end of a story, or a series of such ideas first appears in the order A, B, C ... before being reversed as ... C, B, A) has been observed in the Homeric epics. Opinion differs as to whether these occurrences are a conscious artistic device, a mnemonic aid or a spontaneous feature of human storytelling.
Both of the Homeric poems begin with an invocation to the
Muse
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the ...
.
In the ''Iliad'', the poet beseeches her to sing of "the anger of Achilles",
and, in the ''Odyssey'', he asks her to tell of "the man of many ways".
A similar opening was later employed by Virgil in his ''
Aeneid
The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of th ...
''.
Textual transmission
The orally transmitted Homeric poems were put into written form at some point between the eighth and sixth centuries BC. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to a scribe by the poet and that our inherited versions of the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' were in origin orally-dictated texts.
Albert Lord
Albert Bates Lord (15 September 1912 – 29 July 1991) was a professor of Slavic and comparative literature at Harvard University who, after the death of his mentor Milman Parry, carried on Parry's research on epic poetry.
Early life
Lord was bor ...
noted that the Balkan bards that he was studying revised and expanded their songs in their process of dictating. Some scholars hypothesize that a similar process of revision and expansion occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down.
Other scholars hold that, after the poems were created in the eighth century, they continued to be orally transmitted with considerable revision until they were written down in the sixth century. After textualisation, the poems were each divided into 24 rhapsodes, today referred to as books, and labelled by the letters of the
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as w ...
. Most scholars attribute the book divisions to the Hellenistic scholars of
Alexandria
Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandri ...
, in Egypt. Some trace the divisions back further to the Classical period. Very few credit Homer himself with the divisions.
In antiquity, it was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the late sixth century BC by
Peisistratos
Pisistratus or Peisistratus ( grc-gre, Πεισίστρατος ; 600 – 527 BC) was a politician in ancient Athens, ruling as tyrant in the late 560s, the early 550s and from 546 BC until his death. His unification of Attica, the triangular ...
(died 528/7 BC), in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension".
The idea that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and first written down during the reign of Peisistratos is referenced by the first-century BC Roman orator
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...
and is also referenced in a number of other surviving sources, including two ancient ''Lives of Homer''.
From around 150 BC, the texts of the Homeric poems seem to have become relatively established. After the establishment of the
Library of Alexandria, Homeric scholars such as
Zenodotus
Zenodotus ( grc-gre, Ζηνόδοτος) was a Greek grammarian, literary critic, Homeric scholar, and the first librarian of the Library of Alexandria. A native of Ephesus and a pupil of Philitas of Cos, he lived during the reigns of the fir ...
of Ephesus,
Aristophanes of Byzantium and in particular
Aristarchus of Samothrace
Aristarchus of Samothrace ( grc-gre, Ἀρίσταρχος ὁ Σαμόθραξ ''Aristarchos o Samothrax''; c. 220 – c. 143 BC) was an ancient Greek grammarian, noted as the most influential of all scholars of Homeric poetry. He was the h ...
helped establish a canonical text.
The first printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
, Italy. Today scholars use medieval manuscripts,
papyri and other sources; some argue for a "multi-text" view, rather than seeking a single definitive text. The nineteenth-century edition of
Arthur Ludwich mainly follows Aristarchus's work, whereas van Thiel's (1991, 1996) follows the medieval vulgate. Others, such as
Martin West (1998–2000) or T.W. Allen, fall somewhere between these two extremes.
[
]
See also
* Achaeans (Homer)
The Achaeans (; grc, Ἀχαιοί ''Akhaioí,'' "the Achaeans" or "of Achaea") is one of the names in Homer which is used to refer to the Greeks collectively.
The term "Achaean" is believed to be related to the Hittite term Ahhiyawa and th ...
* ''Aeneid
The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of th ...
''
* Bibliomancy
Bibliomancy is the use of books in divination. The method of employing sacred books (especially specific words and verses) for 'magical medicine', for removing negative entities, or for divination is widespread in many religions of the world.
Ter ...
* Catalogue of Ships
* Creophylus of Samos Creophylus (Ancient Greek: , ''Kreophylos ho Samios'') is the name of a legendary early Greek epic poet, native to Samos or Chios. He was said to have been a contemporary of Homer and author of the lost epic ''Capture of Oechalia''. According to so ...
* Cyclic Poets
* Deception of Zeus
* Epithets in Homer A characteristic of Homer's style is the use of epithets, as in "rosy-fingered" Dawn or "swift-footed" Achilles. Epithets are used because of the constraints of the dactylic hexameter (i.e., it is convenient to have a stockpile of metrically fitting ...
* Geography of the ''Odyssey''
* Greek mythology
A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities ...
* Hector
In Greek mythology, Hector (; grc, Ἕκτωρ, Hektōr, label=none, ) is a character in Homer's Iliad. He was a Trojan prince and the greatest warrior for Troy during the Trojan War. Hector led the Trojans and their allies in the defense o ...
* Historicity of Homer
* Homeric psychology
* Homeric scholarship
Homeric scholarship is the study of any Homeric topic, especially the two large surviving epics, the '' Iliad'' and '' Odyssey''. It is currently part of the academic discipline of classical studies. The subject is one of the oldest in scholarsh ...
* Homer's Ithaca
Ithaca (; Greek: Ιθάκη, ''Ithakē'') was, in Greek mythology, the island home of the hero Odysseus. The specific location of the island, as it was described in Homer's ''Odyssey'', is a matter for debate. There have been various theories ...
* List of Homeric characters
* Peisistratos
Pisistratus or Peisistratus ( grc-gre, Πεισίστρατος ; 600 – 527 BC) was a politician in ancient Athens, ruling as tyrant in the late 560s, the early 550s and from 546 BC until his death. His unification of Attica, the triangular ...
* ''Sortes Homericae
The ''Sortes Homericae'' (Latin for "Homeric lots"), a type of divination by bibliomancy, involved drawing a random sentence or line from the works of Homer (usually the ''Iliad'') to answer a question or to predict the future. In the Roman world ...
''
* '' Tabula iliaca''
* ''Telemachy
The ''Telemachy'' (from Greek Τηλεμάχεια, ''Tēlemacheia'') is a term traditionally applied to the first four books of Homer's epic poem the ''Odyssey''. They are named so because, just as the ''Odyssey'' tells the story of Odysseus, ...
''
* The Golden Bough
* Trojan Battle Order
The Trojan Battle Order or Trojan Catalogue is an epic catalogue in the second book of the ''Iliad'' listing the allied contingents that fought for Troy in the Trojan War. The catalogue is noted for its deficit of detail compared to the immediate ...
* Trojan War in literature and the arts
There are a wide range of ways in which people have represented the Trojan War in literature and the arts.
Art
Painting
*The pre-war episodes of Leda and the Swan and the Judgement of Paris were frequent subjects in art from the Renaissance onwar ...
* Venetus A
Venetus A is the more common name for the tenth century AD manuscript codex catalogued in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice as ''Codex Marcianus Graecus'' 454, now 822. Its name is Latin for "Venetian A."
Venetus A is the most famous manuscript ...
Manuscript
Notes
Selected bibliography
Editions
;Texts in Homeric Greek
* Demetrius Chalcondyles
Demetrios Chalkokondyles ( el, Δημήτριος Χαλκοκονδύλης ), Latinized as Demetrius Chalcocondyles and found variously as Demetricocondyles, Chalcocondylas or Chalcondyles (14239 January 1511) was one of the most eminent Gree ...
''editio princeps'', Florence, 1488
* the Aldine editions (1504 and 1517)
* 1st ed. with comments, Micyllus and Camerarius, Basel, 1535, 1541 (improved text), 1551 (incl. the Batrachomyomachia
The ''Batrachomyomachia'' ( grc, Βατραχομυομαχία, from , "frog", , "mouse", and , "battle") or ''Battle of the Frogs and Mice'' is a comic epic, or a parody of the ''Iliad'', commonly attributed to Homer, although other authors ha ...
)
* Th. Ridel, Strasbourg, c. 1572, 1588 and 1592.
* Wolf (Halle, 1794–1795; Leipzig, 1804 1807)
* Spitzner (Gotha, 1832–1836)
* Bekker (Berlin, 1843; Bonn, 1858)
* La Roche (''Odyssey'', 1867–1868; ''Iliad'', 1873–1876, both at Leipzig)
* Ludwich (''Odyssey'', Leipzig, 1889–1891; ''Iliad'', 2 vols., 1901 and 1907)
* W. Leaf (''Iliad'', London, 1886–1888; 2nd ed. 1900–1902)
* William Walter Merry and James Riddell (''Odyssey'' i–xii., 2nd ed., Oxford, 1886)
* Monro (''Odyssey'' xiii–xxiv. with appendices, Oxford, 1901)
* Monro and Allen (''Iliad''), and Allen (''Odyssey'', 1908, Oxford).
* D.B. Monro and T.W. Allen 1917–1920, ''Homeri Opera'' (5 volumes: ''Iliad''=3rd edition, ''Odyssey''=2nd edition), Oxford. , , , ,
* H. van Thiel 1991, ''Homeri Odyssea'', Hildesheim. , 1996, ''Homeri Ilias'', Hildesheim.
* M. L. West 1998–2000, ''Homeri Ilias'' (2 volumes), Munich/Leipzig. ,
* P. von der Mühll 1993, ''Homeri Odyssea'', Munich/Leipzig.
* M. L. West 2017, ''Homerus Odyssea'', Berlin/Boston.
Interlinear translations
* ''The Iliad of Homer a Parsed Interlinear'', Handheldclassics.com (2008) Text
English translations
This is a partial list of translations into English of Homer's ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey''.
* Augustus Taber Murray (1866–1940)
** ''Homer: Iliad'', 2 vols., revised by William F. Wyatt, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press (1999).
** ''Homer: Odyssey'', 2 vols., revised by George E. Dimock, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press (1995).
* Robert Fitzgerald
Robert Stuart Fitzgerald (; 12 October 1910 – 16 January 1985) was an American poet, literary critic and translator whose renderings of the Greek classics "became standard works for a generation of scholars and students".Mitgang, Herbert (Janua ...
(1910–1985)
** ''The Iliad'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2004)
** ''The Odyssey'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1998)
* Robert Fagles
Robert Fagles (; September 11, 1933 – March 26, 2008) was an American professor, poet, and academic, best known for his many translations of ancient Greek and Roman classics, especially his acclaimed translations of the epic poems of Homer. ...
(1933–2008)
** ''The Iliad'', Penguin Classics (1998)
** ''The Odyssey'', Penguin Classics (1999)
* Stanley Lombardo
Stanley F. "Stan" Lombardo (alias Hae Kwang; born June 19, 1943) is an American Classicist, and former professor of Classics at the University of Kansas.
He is best known for his translations of the ''Iliad'', the ''Odyssey'', and the ''Aeneid'' ...
(b. 1943)
** ''Iliad'', Hackett Publishing Company
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. is an academic publishing house located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Since beginning operations in 1972, Hackett has concentrated mainly on the humanities, especially classical and philosophical texts. Many Hacket ...
(1997)
** ''Odyssey'', Hackett Publishing Company
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. is an academic publishing house located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Since beginning operations in 1972, Hackett has concentrated mainly on the humanities, especially classical and philosophical texts. Many Hacket ...
(2000)
** ''Iliad'', (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006)
** ''Odyssey'', (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006)
** ''The Essential Homer'', (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006)
** ''The Essential Iliad'', (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006)
* Barry B. Powell
Barry Bruce Powell (born 1942) is an American classical scholar. He is the Halls-Bascom Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, author of the widely used textbook ''Classical Myth'' and many other books. Trained at ...
(b. 1942)
** "Iliad", Oxford University Press (2013)
** "Odyssey", Oxford University PressI (2014)
** ''Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: The Essential Books'', Oxford University Press (2014)
* Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
** ''The Iliad'', Red and Black Publishers (2008)
** ''The Odyssey'', Red and Black Publishers (2008)
* Herbert Jordan (b. 1938)
** ''Iliad'', University of Oklahoma Press (2008) (soft cover)
* Emily Wilson (b. 1971)
** ''The Odyssey'', W.W. Norton & Company (2017)
* Rodney Merrill
** ''The Iliad'', University of Michigan Press (2007)
** ''The Odyssey'', University of Michigan Press (2002)
General works on Homer
*
*
*
* In German, 5th updated and expanded edition, Leipzig, 2005. In Spanish, 2003, . In modern Greek, 2005, .
*
*
*
*
*
Influential readings and interpretations
* (orig. publ. in German, 1946, Bern)
*
*
*
*
*
*
* Reece, Steve. ''The Stranger's Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene.'' Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.
Commentaries
* ''Iliad'':
** P.V. Jones (ed.) 2003, ''Homer's Iliad. A Commentary on Three Translations'', London.
** G.S. Kirk
Geoffrey Stephen Kirk, () was a British classicist who served as the 35th Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge. He published widely on pre-Socratic philosophy and the work of the Greek poet Homer, culminating in a six-volu ...
(gen. ed.) 1985–1993, ''The Iliad: A Commentary'' (6 volumes), Cambridge. , , , , ,
** J. Latacz (gen. ed.) 2002 ''Homers Ilias. Gesamtkommentar. Auf der Grundlage der Ausgabe von Ameis-Hentze-Cauer (1868–1913)'' (6 volumes published so far, of an estimated 15), Munich/Leipzig. ,
** N. Postlethwaite (ed.) 2000, ''Homer's Iliad: A Commentary on the Translation of Richmond Lattimore'', Exeter.
** M.W. Willcock (ed.) 1976, ''A Companion to the Iliad'', Chicago.
* ''Odyssey'':
** A. Heubeck (gen. ed.) 1990–1993, ''A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey'' (3 volumes; orig. publ. 1981–1987 in Italian), Oxford. , ,
** P. Jones (ed.) 1988, ''Homer's Odyssey: A Commentary based on the English Translation of Richmond Lattimore'', Bristol.
** I.J.F. de Jong (ed.) 2001, ''A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey'', Cambridge.
Dating the Homeric poems
*
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Works by Homer at Perseus Digital Library
*
*
*
*
*
The Chicago Homer
*
*
*
{{Authority control
Oral epic poets
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