Homer (Ancient Greek: ? [hom??

ros], Homeros) is best known as the author of the Iliad

and the Odyssey. He was believed by the ancient Greeks to have been the first a
nd greatest of the epic poets. Author of the first known literature of Europe, h
e had a lasting effect on the Western canon.
Whether and when he lived is unknown. Herodotus estimates that Homer lived 400 y
ears before his own time, which would place him at around 850 BCE.[1] Pseudo-Her
odotus estimates that he was born 622 years before Xerxes I placed a pontoon bri
dge over the Hellespont in 480 BCE, which would place him at 1102 BCE, 168 years
after the fall of Troy in 1270 BCE. These two end points are 252 years apart, r
epresentative of the differences in dates given by the other sources.[2]
The importance of Homer to the ancient Greeks is described in Plato's "Republic"
, which portrays him as the protos didaskalos, "first teacher", of the tragedian
s, the hegemon paideias, "leader of Greek culture", and the ten Hellada pepaideu
kon, "teacher of [all] Greece".[3] Homer's works, which are about fifty percent
speeches,[4] provided models in persuasive speaking and writing that were emulat
ed throughout the ancient and medieval Greek worlds.[5] Fragments of Homer accou
nt for nearly half of all identifiable Greek literary papyrus finds in Egypt.[6]
Contents
1 Period
2 Life and legends
2.1 "Lives of Homer"
2.2 Etymological theories
2.3 Cultural background
2.4 Biographical assertions
3 Works attributed to Homer
3.1 Epics
4 Identity and authorship
5 Homeric studies
6 Homeric dialect
7 Homeric style
8 History and the Iliad
9 Hero cult
10 Transmission and publication
11 See also
12 Notes
13 Selected bibliography
13.1 Editions
13.2 Interlinear translations
13.3 English translations
13.4 General works on Homer
13.5 Influential readings and interpretations
13.6 Commentaries
13.7 Dating the Homeric poems
14 Further reading
15 External links
Period[edit]
Part of an 11th-century manuscript, "the Townley Homer". The writing on the top
and right side are scholia.
The chronological period of Homer depends on the meaning to be assigned to the w
ord Homer. If the works attributed either wholly or partially to a blind poet name
d Homer, were really authored by such a person, then he must have had biographic
al dates, or a century or other historical period, which can be described as the
life and times of Homer. If on the other hand Homer is to be considered a mythi
cal character, the legendary founder of a guild of rhapsodes called the Homerida
e, then Homer means the works attributed to the rhapsodes of the guild, who might
have composed primarily in a single century or over a period of centuries. And f
inally, much of the geographic and material content of the Iliad and Odyssey app

ear to be consistent with the Aegean Late Bronze Age, the time of the floruit of
Troy, but not the time of the Greek alphabet. The term Homer can be used to mean
traditional elements of verse known to the rhapsodes from which they composed or
al poetry, which transmitted information concerning the culture of Mycenaean Gre
ece. This information is often called the world of Homer (or of Odysseus, or the I
liad). The Homeric period would in that case cover a number of historical period
s, especially the Mycenaean Age, prior to the first delivery of a work called th
e Iliad.
Concurrent with the questions of whether there was a biographical person named H
omer, and what role he may have played in the development of the currently known
texts, is the question of whether there ever was a uniform text of the Iliad or
Odyssey. Considered word-for-word, the printed texts as we know them are the pr
oduct of the scholars of the last three centuries. Each edition of the Iliad or
Odyssey is a little different, as the editors rely on different manuscripts and
fragments, and make different choices as to the most accurate text to use. The t
erm accuracy reveals a fundamental belief in an original uniform text. The manuscr
ipts of the whole work currently available date to no earlier than the 10th cent
ury. These are at the end of a missing thousand-year chain of copies made as eac
h generation of manuscripts disintegrated or were lost or destroyed. These numer
ous manuscripts are so similar that a single original can be postulated.[7]
The time gap in the chain is bridged by the scholia, or notes, on the existing m
anuscripts, which indicate that the original had been published by Aristarchus o
f Samothrace in the 2nd century BCE. Librarian of the Library of Alexandria, he
had noticed a wide divergence in the works attributed to Homer, and was trying t
o restore a more authentic copy. He had collected several manuscripts, which he
named: the Sinopic, the Massiliotic, etc. The one he selected for correction was
the koine, which Murray translates as the Vulgate. Aristarchus was known for his
conservative selection of material. He marked lines that he thought were spuriou
s, not of Homer. The entire last book of the Odyssey was marked.
The koine in turn had come from the first librarian at Alexandria, Zenodotus, wh
o flourished at the beginning of the 3rd century BCE. He also was attempting to
restore authenticity to manuscripts he found in a state of chaos. He set the pre
cedent by marking passages he considered spurious, and by filling in material th
at seemed to be missing himself. Neither Zenodotus nor Aristarchus mentioned any
authentic master copy from which to make corrections. Their method was intuitiv
e. The current division into 24 books each for the Iliad and Odyssey came from Z
enodotus.
Murray rejects the concept that an authoritative text for the Vulgate existed at
the time of Zenodotus. He resorts to the fragments, the quotations of Homer in
other works. About 200 existed at the time Murray wrote. Some of these match the
current texts, some seem to paraphrase them, and some are not represented at al
l. Murray cites the Shield of Achilles, which also appears as the Shield of Hera
cles in Hesiod. Murray concludes that the epic poems were still in "a fluid stat
e". He presents 150 BCE as the date after which the text solidifies around the V
ulgate. Of the 5th century BCE, Murray said "'Homer' meant to them 'the author o
f the Iliad and the Odyssey', but we cannot be sure that either
was exactly what
we mean by those words."[8]
The earliest mention of a work of Homer was by Callinus, a poet who flourished a
bout 750 BCE. He attributed the Thebais, an epic about the attack on Boeotian Th
ebes by the epigonoi, to Homer. The Thebais was written about the time of the ap
pearance of the Greek alphabet, but it could have been originally oral. The Ilia
d is mentioned by name in Herodotus with regard to the early 6th century, but th
ere is no telling what Iliad that is. Almost all the ancient sources from the ve
ry earliest appear determined that a Homer, author of the Iliad and Odyssey, exi
sted. The author of the Hymn to Apollo identifies himself in the last verse of t
he poem as a blind man from Chios.
Nevertheless it is possible to make a case that Homer was only a mythological ch
aracter, the supposed founder of the Homeridae. Martin West has asserted that "H
omer" is "not the name of a historical poet, but a fictitious or constructed nam
e."[9] Oliver Taplin, in the Oxford History of the Classical World s article on Ho

mer, announces that the elements of his life are largely

demonstrable fictions. [10
] Another attack on the biographical details comes from G.S. Kirk, who said: "An
tiquity knew nothing definite about the life and personality of Homer."[11] Tapl
in prefers instead to speak of Homer as a historical context for the poems. His da
tes for this context are 750-650 BCE, without considering Murray s fluid state.
With or without Homer, according to Murray, there is little likelihood that the
Iliad and Odyssey of the early sources are the ones we know. Based on the fact t
hat the Iliad was recited at the Panathenaic Games, which started in 566 BCE, Gr
egory Nagy selects a date of the 6th century for the fixation of the epics, as o
pposed to Murray s 150 BCE.[12] All of these views are only philologic. Regardless
of whether there was or was not a Homer, or whether the texts of the Homerica w
ere or were not close to the ones that exist today, philology alone does not she
d any light on the similarities between Mycenaean culture and the geographical a
nd material props of the world of Homer.
Archaeology, however, continues to support the theory that much detailed informa
tion survived in the form of formulae and stock pieces to be combined creatively
by the rhapsodes of later centuries. A number of combined archaeological and ph
ilological works have been written on the topic, such as Denys Page s History and t
he Homeric Iliad and Martin P. Nilsson s The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology. The
linguist, Calvert Watkins, went so far as to seek an inherited Proto-Indo-Europ
ean language origin for some epithets and the epic verse form.[13] If he is corr
ect, the stock themes and verses of rhapsodes may be far older than the Trojan W
ar, which would, in that case, be only the latest opportunity for an epic.
Homer cannot be presented as a single author of a set of works as they are today
describing events of history that are more or less real, apart from the obvious
mythology. Homeric studies are like the proverbial apple of philosophy. There i
s no beginning and no end. No matter what starting problem is selected, it leads
immediately to another. The total sum of all the problems is known as the Homer
ic question, which is, of course, generic and not singular.
Life and legends[edit]
Homer and His Guide, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825 1905), portraying Homer o
n Mount Ida, beset by dogs and guided by the goatherder Glaucus (as told in Pseu
do-Herodotus)
"Lives of Homer"[edit]
Various traditions have survived purporting to give details of Homer's birthplac
e and background. The satirist Lucian, in his True History, describes him as a B
abylonian called Tigranes, who assumed the name Homer when taken "hostage" (home
ros) by the Greeks.[14] When the Emperor Hadrian asked the Oracle at Delphi abou
t Homer, the Pythia proclaimed that he was Ithacan, the son of Epikaste and Tele
machus, from the Odyssey.[15] These stories were incorporated into the various "
lives of Homer",[16] "compiled from the Alexandrian period onwards".[17]
The "lives of Homer" refer to a set of longer fragments on the topic of the life
and works of Homer written by authors who for the most part remain anonymous. S
ome were attributed to more famous authors. In the 20th century CE, all the vita
e were gathered into a standard reference work by Thomas W. Allen and made a par
t of Homeri Opera, "the Works of Homer", first published in 1912 by Oxford Unive
rsity Press. This edition has been informally known as "the Oxford Homer" and th
e Vitae Homeri section as "the lives of Homer" or just "the lives". The relevant
part of Volume V in scholarship on the vitae is often called just "Allen" with
page numbers denoting the vita.[18]
Allen records some several vitae collected from various sources: the Vita Herodo
tea, pp 192 218, now known as Pseudo-Herodotus, because probably not of Herodotus;
the Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, pp 225 238, with fragments on 218-221; the two Pl
utarchi vitae (now Pseudo-Plutarch), pp 238 244 and pp 244 245 respectively; some vi
tae identified as IV (elsewhere known as Vita Scorialenses I[19]), pp 245 246, V (
Vita Scorialensis II), pp 247 250, VI (Vita Romana[20]), pp 250 253, and finally VII
, which is really three, giving extracts from Eustathius, pp 253 254 and 255, John
Tzetzes, pp 254 255, and Suidas, pp 256 268, now identified as Hesychius Milesius.
Nagy reorganizes the list into eleven, Vita 1 through Vita 10, with Plutarch bei

ng divided into 3a and 3b. In addition he adds Vita 11 from the Chrestomathia of
Proclus, pp 99 102.[21] The varying and contradictory biographical information in
these sources is termed humorously by Nagy "Variations on a Theme of Homer" aft
er the model of the names of certain musical compositions.[22]
For more details on this topic, see Ancient accounts of Homer, Life of Homer (Ps
eudo-Herodotus).
Etymological theories[edit]

Raphael's inspired Homer on Mount Parnassus.

Homer is name of unknown origin, ostensibly Greek. However, many Greek words, and
especially names in the east, where the Greeks were in contact with eastern lang
uage speakers, were loans, approximations, or paraphrases of foreign words. For
example, Darius to the Greeks was Darayava(h)us, "holding firm the good", to him
self and the other Old Persian speakers. Cadmus, overthrown king of Thebes, repo
rted to have been Phoenician, was probably seen as an easterner, from Hebrew/Phoen
ician qdm, "the east". Priam was perhaps from Luwian Priya-muwa-, which means "e
xceptionally courageous. Many names have a derivation from a foreign language but
also fit or partially fit derivations from Proto-Indo-European through Greek. T
here are but few rules to assist the linguist in identifying which is the most l
ikely.
Etymologies for the name Homeros reach beyond the Greek. On the one hand, he may
have a Hellenized Phoenician name. West conjectures a Phoenician prototype for
Homer's name as a patronymic, Homeridae (male progeny from the line of Homer), *
bene omerim ("sons of speakers"); id est professional tale-tellers.[23] Here the
patronymic would designate the guild. In Greek, the Homer in Homeridae would ha
ve to be in the singular, the implied single ancestor of a clan practicing a her
editary trade. The hypothetical semitic ancestors are in the plural; where "ben"
can be used for one "father", the id- construction can never designate a plural
father.
On the other hand, Proto-Indo-European etymologies are also available. The poet'
s name is homophonous with Greek ? (homeros), "hostage" (or "surety").[24] This word
is in the Attic dialect, and was a word in general use. In the vitae of Pseudo-H
erodotus and Plutarch, it had a relatively obscure meaning: "blind", which is in
terpreted as meaning "he who accompanies; he who is forced to follow" a guide.[2
5] The geographic specificity of the word typically is explained by a presumptio
n that it was known mainly in Aeolis on the coast of Asia Minor, the locale wher
e Homer performed, and therefore is a word of the Aeolic dialect.[26] There is n
o linguistic reason other than usage for thinking so. The letter eta brands the
word as being East Greek, as opposed to the West Greek Cretan form, which has an
alpha instead. Ionic and Attic also were East Greek. Proclus' Chrestomathia, ho
wever, explicitly says, "the tuphloi were called homeroi by the Aeolians"[27] Th
roughout Pseudo-Herodotus, ? (homeros) is synonymous with the standard Greek (tup
aning 'blind'.
The characterization of Homer as a blind bard begins in extant literature with t
he last verse in the Delian Hymn to Apollo, the third of the Homeric Hymns,[28]
later cited to support this notion by Thucydides.[29] The author of the hymn cla
ims to be a blind bard from Chios. This claim is quite different from the mere a
ttribution of the hymn to Homer by a third party from a different time. The clai
m cannot be false without the supposition of a deliberate fraud, rather than a m
ere mistake. Also, critics have long taken as self-referential[30] a passage in
the Odyssey describing a blind bard, Demodocus, in the court of the Phaeacian ki
ng, who recounts stories of Troy to the shipwrecked Odysseus.[31]
Despite the insistence of the surviving sources that Homer was blind, there are
many serious objections to the "blind" theory. A few of the vitae imply that he
was not blind. If he could not write, then he was illiterate and incapable of co
mposition. A large poem would have been beyond the capacity of human memory with
out the assistance of written cues. Moreover, the images in the poem are very gr
aphic, but a blind man would never have experienced the scenes of the images. An
swers exist to all the objections.[32] The example of John Milton, who composed
and dictated "Paradise Lost" while totally blind, demonstrates that a blind man

can compose an epic. Albert B. Lord's "The Singer of Tales", on the topic of epi
cs sung by modern rhapsodes, shows that epics of that size have been in fact bei
ng composed spontaneously from memorized elements in modern times. The problem o
f visual cues can be solved if Homer can be presumed not to have been blind from
birth, but to have become blind, which is the point of view of Pseudo-Herodotus
.
In the latter source, Homer, after losing his sight to disease, embarks on a car
eer as a wandering rhapsode, or impromptu composer of poems at public gatherings
. Either at the beginning of his career or early in it, he assumes a stage name,
reputedly "the blind man", which declares himself to be in the category of blin
d prophets, who see with inspired inner vision, but not with outer, bringing a s
ort of divine glamor to the performance. Not all the vitae agree on the meaning
of the name. There is nothing biological about the Greek roots. The word is segm
ented Hom-eros, where Hom is from Greek homou, "together",[33] and the second -a
r- in arariskein, "join together",[34] the eta in -eros being East Greek. The "b
lind" meaning joins together the blind man and his guide. Other unions are certa
inly possible, provided they are attested. Gregory Nagy uses a phrase, phone hom
ereusai, "fitting [the song] together with the voice" found in Hesiod, a contemp
orary of Homer, to interpret Homeros as "he who fits (the Song) together".[35]
Consideration of the name as a type leaves open the possibility that any rhapsod
e could conform to it; that is, there was no biographic original named Homer. We
st says "The probability is that 'Homer' was not the name of a historical Greek
poet but is the imaginary ancestor of the Homeridai; such guild-names in -idai a
nd -adai are not normally based on the name of an historical person".[23] They w
ere upholding their function as rhapsodes or "lay-stitchers" specialising in the
recitation of Homeric poetry.
Cultural background[edit]
Ancient Greek coast of Anatolia
William Ihne examining the sources counted as many 19 locations in classical tim
es that claimed Homer as a citizen, including Athens, which accepted Smyrna as H
omer s native city, but insisted the city was its colony. The cause of these multi
ple claims was civic competition for the honor.[36] Ihne chose Smyrna because so
me of the Vitae identify the word Homer as Aeolic, and Smyrna had an Aeolic back
ground. These circumstances give precedence to the longest, most detailed vita,
that of Pseudo-Herodotus, which is one of the sources that identify Smyrna as or
iginally Aeolian.
The Aeolians were one of the three major ethnic groups of ancient Greece, the ot
her two being Ionians and Dorians. Aeolians came mainly from Thessaly, occupying
also Boeotia at an early date, after the Trojan War, in parallel to the occupat
ion of Peloponnesus by the Dorians. They had their own dialect of East Greek. He
siod as a Boeotian was a member of the group, which is substantiated by the Aeol
ic phrases related to the name of Homer found in his works. The Aeolians coloniz
ed the northwest coast of Asia Minor, calling their region Aeolis, and Lesbos.[3
7] The villages to which they immigrated were already populated by the descendan
ts of the Trojan War population. They were keeping the lore alive, according to
Pseudo-Herodotus. Aeolis extended from the coast opposite Lesbos to Smyrna on th
e edge of Ionia. The Aeolian League contained 12 cities, including Smyrna. To th
e south were the 12 cities, or dodacapolis, of the Ionian League. At about 688 B
CE Smyrna was taken by Colophonians who had ostensibly come to a festival there
and passed into Ionian hands.[38]
The political relevance of the two leagues came to a practical end in the latter
half of the 5th century BCE when most of the cities around the Aegean joined, o
r were forced to join, the Delian League, a koine implementing the hegemony of A
thens. Each city must contribute men and ships or money to a common defense forc
e. The treasury was kept at Athens. The details and conjoined events are the top
ic of Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War. Inscriptions from those times
offer a basis for the study of Aeolic. Buck distinguished three dialects, Thessa
lian, Boeotian, and Lesbian.[39]
The Ionian cities in Asia Minor spoke a dialect of Ionic. In the border region b

etween Ionia and Aeolis it was modified to include features taken from Aeolic, c
reating an Ionic-Aeolic mixture similar to that of the Homeric poems.[40] For ex
ample, Chios had always been a member of the Ionian League,[41] and yet Chian con
tains a few special characteristics, which are of Aeolic origin. [42] The same sor
t of admixture did not occur at the Ionic-Dorian border in southwestern Anatolia
.
From the fact that Lesbian acquired more Ionic features in poetry over the cours
e of time Janko argues for a northward expansion of Ionian population and speech
at the expense of the Aeolians. [43] Aeolic was gradually assimilating to Ionic, b
ut after the 5th century BCE both began to assimilate to the now widespread sist
er dialect of Ionic, Attic, and the koine that developed from it in the Hellenis
tic period. Attic began to appear in the inscriptions of Ionia in the 4th centur
y BCE and had displaced Ionian by about 100 BCE. In 281 BC the new kingdom of Pe
rgamon acquired the Aeolic coast of Anatolia, separating Lesbian, which was gone
from the kingdom by the 3rd century BCE. Lesbian went on until the 1st century
CE and was the last Aeolic dialect to disappear.[44]
G.S. Kirk, who tends to be somewhat skeptical concerning the biographic details
given in the vitae, at least extends a limited credibility to some basic circums
tances as at all plausible. Homer is most frequently said to have been born in the
Ionian region of Asia Minor, at Smyrna, or on the island of Chios, dying on the
Cycladic island of Ios.[17] These areas were either Aeolian or partially so. Sm
yrna had not yet been taken by the Ionians. Chios had been settled by pre-Hellen
ic tribesmen from Thessaly, but the language remains unknown. They may have been
Aeolic-speaking. The association with Chios dates back to at least Semonides of
Amorgos, who cited Iliad 6.146 as by "the man of Chios".[45] An eponymous bardi
c guild, known as the Homeridae (sons of Homer), or Homeristae ('Homerizers')[46
] existed there, tracing descent from an ancestor of that name. On Ios were used
some words known to be Aeolic; for example, Homereon was one of the names for a
month in the calendar of Ios.[47] The Smyrna connection is alluded to in the or
iginal name posited for him by several vitae: Melesigenes, born of Meles", a rive
r which flowed by that city.
The poems give evidence of familiarity with the natural details and place-names
of this area of Asia Minor;[48] for example, Homer refers to meadow birds at the
mouth of the Caystros,[49] a storm in the Icarian sea,[50] and mentions that wo
men in Maeonia and Caria stain ivory with scarlet.[51] However, Homer also had a
geographical knowledge of all Mycenaean Greece that has been verified by discov
ery of most of the sites. Wilhelm Dorpfeld, the classical archaeologist,[52] sug
gests that Homer had visited many of the places and regions which he describes i
n his epics, such as Mycenae, Troy and more. According to Diodorus Siculus, Home
r had even visited Egypt.[53]
Biographical assertions[edit]
Chios
Some vitae depict Homer as a wandering minstrel, like Thamyris[54] or Hesiod, wh
o walked as far as Chalkis to sing at the funeral games of Amphidamas.[55] We ar
e given the image of a "blind, begging singer who hangs around with little peopl
e: shoemakers, fisherman, potters, sailors, elderly men in the gathering places
of harbour towns".[56] The poems, on the other hand, give us evidence of singers
at the courts of the nobility. There is a strong aristocratic bias in the poems
demonstrated by the lack of any major protagonists of non-aristocratic stock, a
nd by episodes such as the beating down of the commoner Thersites by the king Od
ysseus for daring to criticize his superiors. Scholars are divided as to which c
ategory, if any, the court singer or the wandering minstrel, the historic "Homer
" belonged.[57]
Most of the 12 vitae have little concern for historicty. Scorialenses I says we o
nly hear the report, and do not know anything. Most therefore report several orig
in stories. They are typically at least in part mythical. Whether the latter are
given unfeigned credibility is not clear. For instance, Homer was the son of th
e river Meles and a nymph. Pseudo-Plutarch I, relying less on mythology, present
s an alternative genealogy that makes Homer and Hesiod cousins. The only account

that presumes a historical character and a real-life setting without resorting

to mythology is the more lengthy Pseudo-Herodotus.
In the vita, a colonist of Cyme, Cleanax of Argos, was given custody of the orph
aned Chretheis, daughter of deceased friends and fellow colonists, by her parent
s before their deaths. When she became pregnant without a husband he sent her in
disgrace to the new colony of Smyrna in the custody of a protector, a friend fr
om Boeotia, Ismenias. Attending a festival on the banks of the River Meles she g
ave birth unexpectedly to a son, whom she called Melesi-genes, river-born. A singl
e mother, she left the protection of Ismenias, becoming an itinerant laborer. Sh
e found work with a schoolmaster, Phemius, processing wool he had been paid by t
he students. A relationship having developed, he convinced her to live with him
(syn-oikein), promising to make the boy his own son, support and educate him.
A prodigy, the young Melisigenes was successful in school. On the deaths of Phem
ius and his mother years later he inherited the school. He also opened his home
hospitably to merchants passing through. A merchant, Mentes, convinced him to le
ave the school and sign on as a seaman in his ship. He is said to have made the
most of his ports of call by researching each one and taking written notes. Havi
ng contracted an eye disease he was put ashore for treatment and recovery with a
friend of the captain in Ithaca. He used the time to research the story of Odys
seus. Having recovered on that occasion, he later suffered a relapse in Colophon
, losing his vision altogether.
Izmir (Smyrna)
Retiring to Smyrna he decided to pursue the recitation of poetry. When his resou
rces were exhausted, he went on the road looking for opportunities. In Neonteich
us, a colony of Cyme, he stopped by chance before the shop of a shoemaker, Tychi
us, and began to beg in dactylic hexameter, stringing formulae together. Thus be
gan a habit that he kept for the rest of his life, of communicating in verse abo
ut ordinary matters to advertise his skills. On this occasion he was successful.
The shoemaker opened his home and allowed him to recite in the shop. He became
for a time a fixture in Neontychus, but unable to prosper there, he returned to
Cyme. In Larissa en route he was hired to write an epitaph for the tomb of Midas
, deceased king of Phrygia.
In Cyme he recited in the salons. He was so successful that he asked the city co
uncil (boule) in session for support at public expense, the quid pro quo being t
hat he would make the city famous. One of the councilmen argued that if they wer
e going to support homeroi, or blind men, they would soon have a useless crowd of
them in Cyme. The measure was defeated. He subsequently departed for Phocaea, an
Ionian city. He rhymed, I will endure the fate that the god gave me when I was b
orn, bearing defeat with a patient heart, but no longer do my limbs wish to rema
in in the sacred streets of Cyme. Then he cursed the city, that no poet should be
born there to make them famous. Meanwhile, hearing of the incident, the people
began to call him Homeros, the blind man.
After frequenting the salons of Phocaea without much success, he entered into an
agreement with one Thestorides, who would support him in exchange for the title
to the authorship of his work. Thestorides wrote down the current works as they
were orally composed. After a time he abandoned Phocaea, breaking the support a
greement, and went clandestinely to Chios to found a school there, reciting Home
r s verses as his own. Some merchants informed Homer that his verses were being re
cited on Chios under another name. Attempting to find passage to Chios Homer was
turned down by some fishermen but was taken by some woodcutters to the beach at
Erythraea opposite. From there he found passage with other fishermen, who lande
d him at an unnkown beach.
The location was the Troad, near Mount Ida. Homer, following the sound of goats,
was beset by the herd dogs, and rescued by the herder, Glaucus. After a night o
f regaling Glaucus with verses by the campfire, Homer was introduced to his mast
er the next day, who hired him as a tutor for his children. He became successful
for the first time, composing many of the poems. Hearing of his fame, Thestorid
es abandoned the school at Chios. Crossing to the island, Homer founded another,
prospered, married, had two daughters, and wrote the Iliad and Odyssey. Going o

n tour to mainland Greece he stopped at Samos for the festivals there. Heading f
or Athens in the spring his ship was blown to Ios. While waiting for favorable w
inds he grew ill and died. The author then goes on to make a case that Homer was
Aeolian, not Ionian. He gives the date of his birth as 622 years before Xerxes,
which if true would make his mention of writing anachronist if the writing was
in the Greek alphabet.
Works attributed to Homer[edit]
The attribution of a work is not the same meaning as a known authorship, the dif
ference being an element of doubt. The Greeks of the sixth and early fifth centu
ries BCE understood by the works of "Homer", generally, "the whole body of heroi
c tradition as embodied in hexameter verse".[58] The entire Epic Cycle was inclu
ded. The genre included further poems on the Trojan War, such as the Little Ilia
d, the Nostoi, the Cypria, and the Epigoni, as well as the Theban poems about Oe
dipus and his sons. Other works, such as the corpus of Homeric Hymns, the comic
mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog-Mouse War"), and the Margites, were also
attributed to him. Two other poems, the Capture of Oechalia and the Phocais were
also assigned Homeric authorship.
Epics[edit]
The Iliad and the Odyssey are both mentioned as works of Homer by Herodotus.[59]
He quotes a few lines from them both, which are the same in today s editions. The
passage quoted from the Iliad mentions that Paris stopped at Sidon before bring
ing Helen to Troy. From the fact that the Cypria has Paris going directly to Tro
y from Sparta, Herodotus concludes that it was not written by Homer. The doubtin
g process had begun.
In Works and Days, Hesiod says that he crossed to Euboea to contend in the games
held by the sons of Amphidamas at Chalcis.[60] There he won with a hymnos and t
ook away the prize of a tripod, which he dedicated to the Muses of Mount Helicon
, where he first began with aoide, song. One of the vitae, the Certamen , picks up th
is theme. Homer and Hesiod were contemporaries, it says. They both attended the
funeral games of Amphidamas, conducted by his son, Ganyctor, and both contended
in the contest of sophia, wit. In it, one was required to ask a question of the ot
her, who must reply in verse.
Unable to decide, the judge had them each recite from their poems. Hesiod quoted
Works and Days; Homer, Iliad , both as they are now, but neither poem can have bee
n the modern. Hesiod cannot have described beforehand the very event in which he
was participating. The Iliad is supposed to have been written already. It is no
t called that, however. The victory was given to Hesiod because his poem was abo
ut peace, but Homer s, about war.
After the contest, Homer continued his wandering, composing and reciting epic po
etry. The Certamen mentions the Thebais, quoting the first line, which differs but
little from the first line of the Iliad as it is now. It had 7000 lines, as did
the subsequent Epigoni, with a similar first line. The Certamen qualifies the att
ribution to Homer with some say . Subsequently he wrote the epitaph for Midas tomb,
for which he got a silver bowl, and then the Odyssey in 12,000 lines (today s is 1
2110). He had already written the Iliad in 15,500 lines (today s is 15693). Just t
hese three epics alone are 34,500 lines, word-for-word, we are asked to believe,
without reference to the rest of the prodigious Epic Cycle. Then he went to Ath
ens, and to Argos, where he delivered lines 559-568 of Book 2 of the Iliad with
the addition of two more not in the current version. Subsequently he went to Del
os, where he delivered the Hymn to Apollo, and was made a citizen of all the Ion
ian states. Going finally to Ios he slipped on some clay and suffered a fatal fa
ll.
The term Epic Cycle (Epikos Kuklos) refers to a series of ten epic poems written b
y different authors purporting to tell an interconnected sequence of stories cov
ering all Greek mythology. Themes were selected from them for Greek drama as wel
l. The name appears in the Chrestomathia of Eutychius Proclus, a synopsis of Gre
ek literature, known only through further abridged fragments written by Photios
I of Constantinople. No etymology was given. Evelyn-White hypothesizes that they
were written round the Iliad and Odyssey and had a clearly imitative structure.[61]
In this view Homer need have written no more than the Iliad, or the Iliad and O

dyssey, with the Homeridae responsible for all the rest. The unity of theme and
structure came from the close association of the authors in the guild or school.
Proclus does not subscribe to the authorships of the Certamen . He provides the nam
es of other authors where they were available in his sources. These 10 epics, of
which only Photius abridgements of Proclus synopses survive, and scattered fragme
nts of other authors in other times, are as follows. First and oldest, the War of
the Titans (Titanomachia), eight fragments, is said to have been written by eith
er Eumelus of Corinth, floruit 760-740 BCE, or Arctinus of Miletus, floruit in t
he First Olympiad, starting 776 BCE.[62]
The Theban Cycle consists of three epics:[63] Story of Oedipus (Oidipodeia), 6600
lines by Cinaethon of Sparta, floruit 764 BCE;[64] Thebaid (Thebais), attributed t
o Homer;[65] and Epigoni (Epigonoi), attributed to Homer.[66] The Trojan Cycle co
nsists of six epics and the Iliad and Odyssey, eight in all:[61] Cyprian Lays (kup
ria) in 11 books, attributed to either Homer, Stasinus, a younger contemporary o
f Homer, or one Hegesias;[67] Aethiopis (Aithiopis) in five books, sequent of the
Iliad, which is a sequent of Cypria, by Arctinus;[68] Little Iliad (Ilias Mikra) i
n four books by Lesches of Mitylene, floruit 660 BCE;[69] Sack of Ilium (Iliou Per
sis) by Arctinus;[70] Returns (Nostoi) by Agias of Troezen,[71] floruit 740 BCE; a
nd Telegony (Telegonia), by Eugammon of Cyrene, floruit 567 BCE.[72]
Identity and authorship[edit]
Statue of Homer outside the Bavarian State Library in Munich
For more details on this topic, see Homeric Question.
The idea that Homer was responsible for just the two outstanding epics, the Ilia
d and the Odyssey, did not win consensus until 350 BCE.[73] While many, such as
Gregory Nagy, find it unlikely that both epics were composed by the same person,
[74] others, such as W. B. Stanford,[75] argue that the stylistic similarities a
re too consistent to support the theory of multiple authorship. One view which a
ttempts to bridge the differences holds that the Iliad was composed by "Homer" i
n his maturity, while the Odyssey was a work of his old age. The Batrachomyomach
ia, Homeric Hymns and cyclic epics are generally agreed to be later than the Ili
ad and the Odyssey.[citation needed]
Most scholars agree that the Iliad and Odyssey underwent a process of standardis
ation and refinement out of older material beginning in the 8th century BCE. An
important role in this standardisation appears to have been played by the Atheni
an tyrant Hipparchus, who reformed the recitation of Homeric poetry at the Panat
henaic festival. Many classicists hold that this reform must have involved the p
roduction of a canonical written text.
Other scholars[who?] still support the idea that Homer was a real person. Since
nothing is known about the life of this Homer, the common joke also recycled with
regard to Shakespeare has it that the poems "were not written by Homer, but by ano
ther man of the same name."[76][77] Samuel Butler argues, based on literary obse
rvations, that a young Sicilian woman wrote the Odyssey (but not the Iliad),[78]
an idea further pursued by Robert Graves in his novel Homer's Daughter and Andr
ew Dalby in Rediscovering Homer.[79]
Independent of the question of single authorship is the near-universal agreement
, after the work of Milman Parry,[80] that the Homeric poems are dependent on an
oral tradition, a generations-old technique that was the collective inheritance
of many singer-poets (aoidoi). An analysis of the structure and vocabulary of t
he Iliad and Odyssey shows that the poems contain many formulaic phrases typical
of extempore epic traditions; even entire verses are at times repeated. Parry a
nd his student Albert Lord pointed out that such elaborate oral tradition, forei
gn to today's literate cultures, is typical of epic poetry in a predominantly or
al cultural milieu, the key words being "oral" and "traditional". Parry started
with "traditional": the repetitive chunks of language, he said, were inherited b
y the singer-poet from his predecessors, and were useful to him in composition.
Parry called these repetitive chunks "formulas".
Exactly when these poems would have taken on a fixed written form is subject to
debate. The traditional solution is the "transcription hypothesis", wherein a no
n-literate "Homer" dictates his poem to a literate scribe between the 8th and 6t

h centuries BCE. The Greek alphabet was introduced in the early 8th century BCE,
so it is possible that Homer himself was of the first generation of authors who
were also literate. The classicist Barry B. Powell suggests that the Greek alph
abet was invented c. 800 BCE by one man, whom he calls the "adapter," in order t
o write down oral epic poetry.[81] More radical Homerists like Gregory Nagy cont
end that a canonical text of the Homeric poems as "scripture" did not exist unti
l the Hellenistic period (3rd to 1st century BCE).
New methods also try to elucidate the question. Combining information technologi
es and statistics stylometry analyzes various linguistic units: words, parts of
speech, and sounds. Based on the frequencies of Greek letters, a first study of
Dietmar Najock[82] particularly shows the internal cohesion of the Iliad and the
Odyssey. Taking into account the repartition of the letters, a recent study of
Stephan Vonfelt[83] highlights the unity of the works of Homer compared to Hesio
d. The thesis of modern analysts being questioned, the debate remains open.
Homeric studies[edit]
Main article: Homeric scholarship
The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to an
tiquity. The aims and achievements of Homeric studies have changed over the cour
se of the millennia. In the last few centuries, they have revolved around the pr
ocess by which the Homeric poems came into existence and were transmitted over t
ime to us, first orally and later in writing.
Some of the main trends in modern Homeric scholarship have been, in the 19th and
early 20th centuries, Analysis and Unitarianism (see Homeric Question), schools
of thought which emphasized on the one hand the inconsistencies in, and on the
other the artistic unity of, Homer; and in the 20th century and later Oral Theor
y, the study of the mechanisms and effects of oral transmission, and Neoanalysis
, the study of the relationship between Homer and other early epic material.
Homeric dialect[edit]
Main article: Homeric Greek
The language used by Homer is an archaic version of Ionic Greek, with admixtures
from certain other dialects, such as Aeolic Greek. It later served as the basis
of Epic Greek, the language of epic poetry, typically in dactylic hexameter.
Homeric style[edit]
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Homer in the company of Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry (replica of Roman Impe
rial mosaic, c. 240 CE, from Vichten)
Aristotle remarks in his Poetics that Homer was unique among the poets of his ti
me, focusing on a single unified theme or action in the epic cycle.[84]
The cardinal qualities of the style of Homer are well articulated by Matthew Arn
old:
[T]he translator of Homer should above all be penetrated by a sense of four qual
ities of his author: that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and di
rect, both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is,
both in his syntax and in his words; that he is eminently plain and direct in t
he substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and finally, that
he is eminently noble.[85]
The peculiar rapidity of Homer is due in great measure to his use of hexameter v
erse. It is characteristic of early literature that the evolution of the thought
, or the grammatical form of the sentence, is guided by the structure of the ver
se; and the correspondence which consequently obtains between the rhythm and the
syntax the thought being given out in lengths, as it were, and these again divide
d by tolerably uniform pauses produces a swift flowing movement such as is rarely
found when periods are constructed without direct reference to the metre. That H
omer possesses this rapidity without falling into the corresponding faults, that
is, without becoming either fluctuant or monotonous, is perhaps the best proof
of his unequalled poetic skill. The plainness and directness of both thought and

expression which characterise him were doubtless qualities of his age, but the
author of the Iliad (similar to Voltaire, to whom Arnold happily compares him) m
ust have possessed this gift in a surpassing degree. The Odyssey is in this resp
ect perceptibly below the level of the Iliad.
Rapidity or ease of movement, plainness of expression, and plainness of thought
are not distinguishing qualities of the great epic poets Virgil, Dante,[86] and
Milton. On the contrary, they belong rather to the humbler epico-lyrical school
for which Homer has been so often claimed. The proof that Homer does not belong
to that school and that his poetry is not in any true sense ballad poetry is furnish
ed by the higher artistic structure of his poems and, as regards style, by the f
ourth of the qualities distinguished by Arnold: the quality of nobleness. It is
his noble and powerful style, sustained through every change of idea and subject
, that finally separates Homer from all forms of ballad poetry and popular epic.
Like the French epics, such as the Chanson de Roland, Homeric poetry is indigeno
us and, by the ease of movement and its resultant simplicity, distinguishable fr
om the works of Dante, Milton and Virgil. It is also distinguished from the work
s of these artists by the comparative absence of underlying motives or sentiment
. In Virgil's poetry, a sense of the greatness of Rome and Italy is the leading
motive of a passionate rhetoric, partly veiled by the considered delicacy of his
language. Dante and Milton are still more faithful exponents of the religion an
d politics of their time. Even the French epics display sentiments of fear and h
atred of the Saracens; but, in Homer's works, the interest is purely dramatic. T
here is no strong antipathy of race or religion; the war turns on no political e
vents; the capture of Troy lies outside the range of the Iliad; and even the pro
tagonists are not comparable to the chief national heroes of Greece. So far as c
an be seen, the chief interest in Homer's works is that of human feeling and emo
tion, and of drama; indeed, his works are often referred to as "dramas".
History and the Iliad[edit]
Main article: Historicity of the Iliad
Greece according to the Iliad
The excavations of Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik in the late 19th century prov
ided initial evidence to scholars that there was an historical basis for the Tro
jan War. Research into oral epics in Serbo-Croatian and Turkic languages, pionee
red by the aforementioned Parry and Lord, began convincing scholars that long po
ems could be preserved with consistency by oral cultures until they are written
down.[80] The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris (and othe
rs) convinced many of a linguistic continuity between 13th century BCE Mycenaean
writings and the poems attributed to Homer.
It is probable, therefore, that the story of the Trojan War as reflected in the
Homeric poems derives from a tradition of epic poetry founded on a war which act
ually took place. It is crucial, however, not to underestimate the creative and
transforming power of subsequent tradition: for instance, Achilles, the most imp
ortant character of the Iliad, is strongly associated with southern Thessaly, bu
t his legendary figure is interwoven into a tale of war whose kings were from th
e Peloponnese.[citation needed] Tribal wanderings were frequent, and far-flung,
ranging over much of Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean.[87] The epic weaves b
rilliantly the disiecta membra (scattered remains) of these distinct tribal narr
atives, exchanged among clan bards, into a monumental tale in which Greeks join
collectively to do battle on the distant plains of Troy.
Hero cult[edit]
The Apotheosis of Homer, by Archelaus of Priene (marble relief, possibly 3rd cen
tury BCE, now in the British Museum)
In the Hellenistic period, Homer was the subject of a hero cult in several citie
s. A shrine, the Homereion, was devoted to him in Alexandria by Ptolemy IV Philo
pator in the late 3rd century BCE. This shrine is described in Aelian's 3rd cent
ury CE work Varia Historia. He tells how Ptolemy "placed in a circle around the
statue [of Homer] all the cities who laid claim to Homer" and mentions a paintin
g of the poet by the artist Galaton, which apparently depicted Homer in the aspe

ct of Oceanus as the source of all poetry.

A marble relief, found in Italy but thought to have been sculpted in Egypt, depi
cts the apotheosis of Homer. It shows Ptolemy and his wife or sister Arsinoe III
standing beside a seated poet, flanked by figures from the Odyssey and Iliad, w
ith the nine Muses standing above them and a procession of worshippers approachi
ng an altar, believed to represent the Alexandrine Homereion. Apollo, the god of
music and poetry, also appears, along with a female figure tentatively identifi
ed as Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses. Zeus, the king of the gods, presides o
ver the proceedings. The relief demonstrates vividly that the Greeks considered
Homer not merely a great poet but the divinely inspired reservoir of all literat
ure.[88]
Homereia also stood at Chios, Ephesus, and Smyrna, which were among the city-sta
tes that claimed to be his birthplace. Strabo (14.1.37) records an Homeric templ
e in Smyrna with an ancient xoanon or cult statue of the poet. He also mentions
sacrifices carried out to Homer by the inhabitants of Argos, presumably at anoth
er Homereion.[89]
Transmission and publication[edit]
Telling Homer's Tales.
Though evincing many features characteristic of oral poetry, the Iliad and Odyss
ey were at some point committed to writing. The Greek script, adapted from a Pho
enician syllabary around 800 BCE, made possible the notation of the complex rhyt
hms and vowel clusters that make up hexameter verse. Homer's poems appear to hav
e been recorded shortly after the alphabet's invention: an inscription from Isch
ia in the Bay of Naples, c. 740 BCE, appears to refer to a text of the Iliad; li
kewise, illustrations seemingly inspired by the Polyphemus episode in the Odysse
y are found on Samos, Mykonos and in Italy, dating from the first quarter of the
seventh century BCE. We have little information about the early condition of th
e Homeric poems, but in the second century BCE, Alexandrian editors stabilized t
his text from which all modern texts descend.
In late antiquity, knowledge of Greek declined in Latin-speaking western Europe
and, along with it, knowledge of Homer's poems. It was not until the fifteenth c
entury CE that Homer's work began to be read once more in Italy. By contrast it
was continually read and taught in the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire where
the majority of the classics also survived. The first printed edition appeared
in 1488 (edited by Demetrios Chalkokondyles and published by Bernardus Nerlius,
Nerius Nerlius, and Demetrius Damilas in Florence, Italy).
One often finds books of the Iliad and Odyssey cited by the corresponding letter
of the Greek alphabet, with upper-case letters referring to a book number of th
e Iliad and lower-case letters referring to the Odyssey. Thus 200 would be short
hand for Iliad book 14, line 200, while 200 would be Odyssey 14.200. The followi
ng table presents this system of numeration:
Iliad

book no.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
Odyssey

See also[edit]
Portal icon
Poetry portal
Portal icon
Literature portal
Achaeans (Homer)
Achilles
Aeneid
Aoidos
Ancient accounts of Homer
Aristarchus of Samothrace
Bibliomancy
Catalogue of Ships
Cyclic Poets
Dactylic hexameter

Deception of Zeus
Epic Cycle
Epic poetry
Epithets in Homer
Geography of the Odyssey
Greek mythology
Hector
Historicity of the Iliad
Homer's Ithaca
Homeric Greek
Homeric nod
Homeric Question
Homeric scholarship
Ithaca
Life of Homer (Pseudo-Herodotus)
List of characters in the Iliad
Odysseus
Peisistratos (Athens)
Rhapsode
Shield of Achilles
Sortes Homerica
Tabula Iliaca
Telemachy
The Golden Bough (mythology)
Trojan Battle Order
Trojan War
Trojan War in art and literature
Troy
Troy VII
Venetus A Manuscript
Zenodotus of Ephesus
Modern scholars
Richard Bentley
Ioannis Kakridis
Adolf Kirchhoff
Geoffrey Kirk
Karl Lachmann
Walter Leaf
Albert Lord
David Binning Monro
Karl Otfried Muller
Gilbert Murray
Gregory Nagy
Gregor Wilhelm Nitzsch
Milman Parry
Barry B. Powell
Heinrich Schliemann
William Bedell Stanford
Jean-Baptiste Gaspard d'Ansse de Villoison
Alan Wace
Martin Litchfield West
Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff
Friedrich August Wolf
Notes[edit]
Jump up ^ Herodotus 2.53.
Jump up ^ "Vita Herodotea", Chapter 38. An analysis can be found in Graziosi 200
2, pp. 98 101 A summary of the main traditional dates and sources can be found in
Smith, William; Marindin, G.E. (1919). A classical dictionary of Greek and Roman
biography, mythology and geography, by Sir William Smith. Revised throughout an
d in part rewritten by G. E. Marindin. London: J. Murray. pp. 422 425.

Jump up ^ Paragraph 595c lines 1-2, paragraph 600a line 9, paragraph 606e lines
1-2, respectively. The references are collected and interpreted in Too, Yun Lee
(2010). "Chapter 3, Section V". The Idea of the Library in the Ancient World. Ox
ford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Jump up ^ Griffin, Jasper (2004). "The Speeches". In Fowler, Robert. Cambridge C
ompanion to Homer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 156.
Jump up ^ Nunlist, Rene (2012). "Homer as a Blueprint for Speechwriters: Eustath
ius Commentaries and Rhetoric". Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 52: 493 509.
Jump up ^ Finley 2002, pp. 11 2 Finley's figures are based upon the corpus of lite
rary papyri published before 1963.
Jump up ^ A summary of the sources and an analysis of textual uniformity can be
found in Murray 1960, Chapter 12 The Text of Homer From Known to Unknown.
Jump up ^ Murray 1960, pp. 297 298
Jump up ^ West, Martin (1999). "The Invention of Homer". Classical Quarterly 49
(364).
Jump up ^ Taplin, Oliver (1986). "2 Homer". In Boardman, John; Griffin, Jasper;
Murray, Oswyn. The Oxford History of the Classical World. Oxford; New York: Oxfo
rd University Press. p. 50.
Jump up ^ Kirk, G.S. (1985). The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume I: books 1-4. Cambr
idge: Cambridge University Press. p. 1.
Jump up ^ Nagy, Gregory (2001). "Homeric Poetry and Problems of Multiformity: Th
e "Panathenaic Bottleneck". Classical Philology 96: 109 119. doi:10.1086/449533.
Jump up ^ Watkins, Calvert (1995). How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-Europea
n Poetics. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press; Internet Archive.
Jump up ^ Lucian, Verae Historiae 2.20, cited and tr. in Graziosi 2002, p. 127
Jump up ^ Parke, Herbert W. (1967). Greek Oracles. UK: Hutchinson Educational. p
p. 136 137 citing the Certamen, 12. ISBN 0-09-084111-5.
Jump up ^ Stoessl, F. (1979). "'Homeros'". Der Kleine Pauly: Lexikon der Antike
in funf Banden: Bd. 2. Munchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. p. 1202.
^ Jump up to: a b Kirk, G.S. (1965). Homer and the Epic: A Shortened Version of
the Songs of Homer. London: Cambridge University Press. p. 190. ISBN 0-521-09356
-2.
Jump up ^ Allen, Thomas W., ed. (1912). Homeri Opera (in Latin and Ancient Greek
). Tomus V: Hymnos Cyclum Fragmenta Margiten Batrachomyomachiam Vitas Continens.
Oxonii: Typographeo Clarendoniano.
Jump up ^ The name means any vita located on a manuscript at the Real Biblioteca
del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, "Royal Library of the Monastery o
f Saint Lorenzo of Escorial", Royal because it is in the king's palace, El Escor
ial, near Madrid. The palace was once a monastery.
Jump up ^ So-called because the main manuscript is at the Biblioteca Nazionale C
entrale di Roma, formerly known as the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Em
anuele II.
Jump up ^ Nagy 2010, p. 29
Jump up ^ Nagy 2010, p. 133
^ Jump up to: a b West, M.L. (1997). The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elem
ents in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 622.
Jump up ^ Liddell & Scott 1940, ?
Jump up ^ Chantraine, P. (1968). "Homer". Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue
grecque (in French). vol. 2 (3 4). Paris: Klincksieck. p. 797. This long-standing
view is the one adopted by many Greek etymological dictionaries. See also the w
ord history as the name Homer in Liddell & Scott 1940, ?
Jump up ^ Silk 1987, p. 4. Silk generalizes to "Aeolic-speaking districts", but
the only district mentioned in Pseudo-Herodotus is Cyme (Aeolis). Still, he did
perform over the entire area, according to the source, and many cities of the re
gion claimed to be his native city.
Jump up ^ Allen p. 99.
Jump up ^ Homeric Hymns 3:172 3
Jump up ^ Thucidides, The Peloponnesian War 3:104
Jump up ^ Graziosi 2002, p. 133
Jump up ^ Odyssey, 8:64ff.

Jump up ^ Beecroft, Alexander (2011). "Blindness and Literacy in the Lives of Ho

mer". Classical Quarterly 61.1: 1 18. doi:10.1017/S0009838810000352.
Jump up ^ Liddell & Scott 1940, ??
Jump up ^ Liddell & Scott 1940, ?
Jump up ^ Nagy 1979, pp. 296 300
Jump up ^ Smith 1876, Homerus
Jump up ^ Smith 1876, Aeolis
Jump up ^ Smith 1876, Smyrna
Jump up ^ Buck 1928, pp. 147 156
Jump up ^ Beaumont, Lesley (2013). "Smyrna". In Wilson, Nigel. Encyclopedia of A
ncient Greece. New York: Routledge.
Jump up ^ Smith 1876, Chios
Jump up ^ Buck 1928, p. 143
Jump up ^ Janko 1982, p. 178
Jump up ^ Browning, Robert (1983). Medieval & Modern Greek (2nd ed.). Cambridge:
University of Cambridge. p. 51.
Jump up ^ Semonides (1989). "Fragment 19". In West, Martin L. Iambi et Elegi Gra
eci ante Alexandrum cantati (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Jump up ^ Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic, p. 307
Jump up ^ Liddell & Scott 1940, ?
Jump up ^ Scott, John Adams (1965). The Unity of Homer. New York: Biblio & Tanne
r Publications. pp. 4 8.
Jump up ^ Iliad 2.459 63
Jump up ^ Iliad 2.144 6
Jump up ^ Iliad 4.142
Jump up ^ "Troja und Ilion" and "Alt-Ithaka: Ein Beitrag zur Homer-Frage, Studie
n und Ausgrabungen aus der insel Leukas-Ithaka"
Jump up ^ The Historical Library of Diodorus Siculus, Book I, ch. VI.
Jump up ^ Iliad, 2.595
Jump up ^ Hesiod, Works and Days, 654 5; Nilsson, Martin P. (1972). Homer & Mycena
e. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 207ff.
Jump up ^ Latacz, Joachim; Holoka, James P., tr. (1996). Homer: His Art and His
World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. p. 29.
Jump up ^ Graziosi 2002, p. 134
Jump up ^ Murray 1960, p. 93
Jump up ^ 11.116.
Jump up ^ Lines 646-662.
^ Jump up to: a b Evelyn-White 1914, p. xxx
Jump up ^ Evelyn-White 1914, pp. 481 482
Jump up ^ Evelyn-White 1914, p. xxix
Jump up ^ Evelyn-White 1914, pp. 484 485
Jump up ^ Evelyn-White 1914, pp. 485 487
Jump up ^ Evelyn-White 1914, pp. 486 489
Jump up ^ Evelyn-White 1914, pp. 489 507
Jump up ^ Evelyn-White 1914, pp. 506 509
Jump up ^ Evelyn-White 1914, pp. 508 519
Jump up ^ Evelyn-White 1914, pp. 520 525
Jump up ^ Evelyn-White 1914, pp. 524 529
Jump up ^ Evelyn-White 1914, pp. 530 532
Jump up ^ Gilbert Murray: The Rise of the Greek Epic, 4th ed. 1934, Oxford Unive
rsity Press reprint 1967 p. 299
Jump up ^ Gregory Nagy: "Homer the Preclassic", passim
Jump up ^ W. B. Stanford, "The Ulysses Theme", Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 1968, p. v
Jump up ^ "Classics in the History of Psychology -- Baldwin (1913) Volume I, Pre
face". yorku.ca.
Jump up ^ http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/literarystudies/Liter
aryBlunders/chap7.html
Jump up ^ Butler, Samuel (1897) The authoress of the Odyssey : where and when sh
e wrote, who she was, the use she made of the Iliad, and how the poem grew under
her hands London: Longmans, Green

Jump up ^ "Mary Ebbott "Butler's Authoress of the Odyssey: gendered readings of

Homer, then and now," (Classics@: Issue 3)" (PDF).
^ Jump up to: a b Adam Parry (ed.) The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Pa
pers of Milman Parry, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1987.
Jump up ^ "Signs of Meaning" Science 324 p. 38, 3 April 2009, reviewing Powell's
Writing and citing Powell's Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet CUP 1991
Jump up ^ Najock, Dietmar (1995). "XXXI, 1 a 4". Letter Distribution and Authors
hip in Early Greek Epics (PDF). Revue informatique et Statistique dans les Scien
ces Humaines. pp. 129 154.
Jump up ^ Vonfelt, Stephan (2010). "Archeologie numerique de la poesie grecque"
(PDF). Universite de Toulouse.
Jump up ^ Aristotle, Poetics, 1451a 16 29. Cf. Aristotle, "On the Art of Poetry" i
n T.S. Dorsch (tr.), Aristotle, Horace, Longinus: Classical Literary Criticism,
Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1965 ch. 8 pp. 42 43
Jump up ^ Matthew Arnold, 'On Translating Homer' (Oxford Lecture, 1861) in Lione
l Trilling (ed.) The Portable Matthew Arnold (1949) Viking Press, New York 1956
pp. 204 228, p. 211
Jump up ^ Dante has Virgil introduce Homer, with a sword in hand, as poeta sovra
no (sovereign poet), walking ahead of Horace, Ovid and Lucan. Cf. Inferno IV, 88
Jump up ^ Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic, Clarendon Press, Oxford 19
07, pp. 182f., slightly expanded in the 4th. ed. (1934) 1960 pp. 206ff.
Jump up ^ Morgan, Llewelyn, 1999. Patterns of Redemption in Virgil's Georgics (C
ambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 30.
Jump up ^ Zanker, Paul, 1996. The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectua
l in Antiquity, Alan Shapiro, trans. (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Selected bibliography[edit]
Editions[edit]
Texts in Homeric Greek
Demetrius Chalcondyles editio princeps, Florence, 1488
the Aldine editions (1504 and 1517)
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 editio
n, Odyssey = 2nd edition), Oxford. ISBN 0-19-814528-4, ISBN 0-19-814529-2, ISBN
0-19-814531-4, ISBN 0-19-814532-2, ISBN 0-19-814534-9
H. van Thiel 1991, Homeri Odyssea, Hildesheim. ISBN 3-487-09458-4, 1996, Homeri
Ilias, Hildesheim. ISBN 3-487-09459-2
M.L. West 1998 2000, Homeri Ilias (2 volumes), Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-71431-9,
ISBN 3-598-71435-1
P. von der Muhll 1993, Homeri Odyssea, Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-71432-7
Interlinear translations[edit]
The Iliad of Homer a Parsed Interlinear, Handheldclassics.com (2008) Text ISBN 9
78-1-60725-298-6
English translations[edit]
Main article: English translations of Homer
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, Harv
ard University Press (1999).
Homer: Odyssey, 2 vols., revised by George E. Dimock, Loeb Classical Library, Ha
rvard University Press (1995).

Robert Fitzgerald (1910 1985)

The Iliad, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2004) ISBN 0-374-52905-1
The Odyssey, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1998) ISBN 0-374-52574-9
Robert Fagles (1933 2008)
The Iliad, Penguin Classics (1998) ISBN 0-14-027536-3
The Odyssey, Penguin Classics (1999) ISBN 0-14-026886-3
Stanley Lombardo (b. 1943)
Iliad, Hackett Publishing Company (1997) ISBN 0-87220-352-2
Odyssey, Hackett Publishing Company (2000) ISBN 0-87220-484-7
Iliad, (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006) ISBN 1-930972-08-3
Odyssey, (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006) ISBN 1-930972-06-7
The Essential Homer, (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006) ISBN 1-930972-12-1
The Essential Iliad, (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006) ISBN 1-930972-10-5
Barry B. Powell (b. 1942)
"Iliad", Oxford University Press (2013) ISBN 978-0199326105
"Odyssey", Oxford University PressI (2014) ISBN 978-0199360314
"Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: The Essential Books", Oxford University Press (2014)
ISBN 978-0199394074
Samuel Butler (1835 1902)
The Iliad, Red and Black Publishers (2008) ISBN 978-1-934941-04-1
The Odyssey, Red and Black Publishers (2008) ISBN 978-1-934941-05-8
Herbert Jordan (b. 1938)
Iliad, University of Oklahoma Press (2008) ISBN 978-0-8061-3974-6 (soft cover)
General works on Homer[edit]
Carlier, Pierre (1999). Homere (in French). Paris: Les editions Fayard. ISBN 2-2
13-60381-2.
de Romilly, Jacqueline (2005). Homere (5th ed.). Paris: Presses Universitaires d
e France. ISBN 2-13-054830-X.
Fowler, Robert, ed. (2004). The Cambridge Companion to Homer. Cambridge: Cambrid
ge University Press. ISBN 0-521-01246-5.
Latacz, J.; Windle, Kevin, Tr.; Ireland, Rosh, Tr. (2004). Troy and Homer: Towar
ds a Solution of an Old Mystery. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-9263
08-6. In German, 5th updated and expanded edition, Leipzig, 2005. In Spanish, 20
03, ISBN 84-233-3487-2. In modern Greek, 2005, ISBN 960-16-1557-1.
Monro, David Binning (1911). "Homer". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclop?dia Britannica
12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 626 639.
Morris, Ian; Powell, Barry B., eds. (1997). A New Companion to Homer. Leiden: Br
ill. ISBN 90-04-09989-1.
Powell, Barry B. (2007). Homer (2nd ed.). Malden, MA; Oxford, UK; Carlton, Victo
ria: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-5325-6.
Vidal-Naquet, Pierre (2000). Le monde d'Homere (in French). Paris: Perrin. ISBN
2-262-01181-8.
Wace, A.J.B.; F.H. Stubbings (1962). A Companion to Homer. London: Macmillan. IS
BN 0-333-07113-1.
Influential readings and interpretations[edit]
Auerbach, Erich (1953). "Chapter 1". Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in W
estern Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-11336-X. (o
rig. publ. in German, 1946, Bern)
de Jong, Irene J.F. (2004). Narrators and Focalizers: the Presentation of the St
ory in the Iliad (2nd ed.). London: Bristol Classical Press. ISBN 1-85399-658-0.
Edwards, Mark W. (1987). Homer, Poet of the Iliad. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ
ersity Press. ISBN 0-8018-3329-9.
Fenik, Bernard (1974). Studies in the Odyssey. Hermes, Einzelschriften 30. Wiesb
aden: Steiner.
Finley, Moses (2002). The World of Odysseus. New York: New York Review of Books.
ISBN 978-1-59017-017-5.
Nagy, Gregory (1979). The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic
Greek Poetry. Baltimore; London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Nagy, Gregory (2010). Homer: the Preclassic. Berkeley: University of California
Press. ISBN 9780520950245.

Commentaries[edit]
Iliad:
P.V. Jones (ed.) 2003, Homer's Iliad. A Commentary on Three Translations, London
. ISBN 1-85399-657-2
G. S. Kirk (gen. ed.) 1985 1993, The Iliad: A Commentary (6 volumes), Cambridge. I
SBN 0-521-28171-7, ISBN 0-521-28172-5, ISBN 0-521-28173-3, ISBN 0-521-28174-1, I
SBN 0-521-31208-6, ISBN 0-521-31209-4
J. Latacz (gen. ed.) 2002 , Homers Ilias. Gesamtkommentar. Auf der Grundlage der A
usgabe von Ameis-Hentze-Cauer (1868 1913) (6 volumes published so far, of an estim
ated 15), Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-74307-6, ISBN 3-598-74304-1
N. Postlethwaite (ed.) 2000, Homer's Iliad: A Commentary on the Translation of R
ichmond Lattimore, Exeter. ISBN 0-85989-684-6
M.W. Willcock (ed.) 1976, A Companion to the Iliad, Chicago. ISBN 0-226-89855-5
Odyssey:
A. Heubeck (gen. ed.) 1990 1993, A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey (3 volumes; orig.
publ. 1981 1987 in Italian), Oxford. ISBN 0-19-814747-3, ISBN 0-19-872144-7, ISBN
0-19-814953-0
P. Jones (ed.) 1988, Homer's Odyssey: A Commentary based on the English Translat
ion of Richmond Lattimore, Bristol. ISBN 1-85399-038-8
I.J.F. de Jong (ed.) 2001, A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey, Cambridge
. ISBN 0-521-46844-2
Dating the Homeric poems[edit]
Janko, Richard (1982). Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns: Diachronic Development in Ep
ic Diction. Cambridge Classical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 0-521-23869-2.
Further reading[edit]
Buck, Carl Darling (1928). The Greek Dialects. Chicago: University of Chicago Pr
ess.
Evelyn-White, Hugh Gerard (tr.) (1914). Hesiod, the Homeric hymns and Homerica.
The Loeb Classical Library. London; New York: Heinemann; MacMillen.
Ford, Andrew (1992). Homer : the poetry of the past. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univers
ity Press. ISBN 0-8014-2700-2.
Graziosi, Barbara (2002). Inventing Homer: The Early Perception of Epic. Cambrid
ge Classical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kirk, G.S. (1962). The Songs of Homer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert (1940). A Greek-English Lexicon (Revised ed
.). Oxford: Clarendon Press; Perseus Digital Library.
Murray, Gilbert (1960). The Rise of the Greek Epic (Galaxy Books ed.). New York:
Oxford University Press.
Schein, Seth L. (1984). The mortal hero : an introduction to Homer's Iliad. Berk
eley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-05128-9.
Silk, Michael (1987). Homer: The Iliad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. I
SBN 0-521-83233-0.
Smith, William, ed. (1876). A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythol
ogy. Vol. I, II & III. London: John Murray.
External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Homer.
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Homer
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
Homer
Works by Homer at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Homer at Internet Archive
Works by Homer at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) Speaker Icon.svg
Homer; Murray, A.T. The Iliad with an English Translation (in Ancient Greek, Eng
lish). I, Books I-XII. London; New York: William Heinemann Ltd.; G.P. Putnam's S
ons; Internet Archive.
The Chicago Homer
Daitz, Stephen (reader). "Homer, Iliad, Book I, lines 1-52". Society for the Rea
ding of Greek and Latin Literature (SORGLL).
Heath, Malcolm (May 4, 2001). "CLAS3152 Further Greek Literature II: Aristotle's

Poetics: Notes on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey". Department of Classics, Universit

y of Leeds; Internet Archive. Retrieved 2014-11-07.
Bassino, Paola (2014). "Homer: A Guide to Selected Sources". Living Poets: a new
approach to ancient history. Durham University. Retrieved November 18, 2014.