homer

Homer is the name traditionally given to the ancient Greek poet or group of poets credited with composing the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that form the core of classical Greek literature. Very little is known about his life, and the historical existence of a single author named Homer is disputed; this uncertainty is labeled the Homeric Question. Ancient sources sometimes describe Homer as a blind bard. Modern scholarship generally places the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey in the late 8th or early 7th century BCE, though exact dating remains debated. The works are written in Homeric Greek, a literary register that blends Ionic and other dialects and is composed in dactylic hexameter, drawing on an older oral tradition.

The Iliad centers on a segment of the Trojan War and the anger of Achilles; the Odyssey follows Odysseus's long voyage home after the fall of Troy. Both poems address themes of heroism, fate, hospitality, divine intervention, and the tension between individual will and communal law. They are known for their epic similes, formal formulas, and a broad cast of gods and mortals.

In antiquity, additional poems known as the Homeric Hymns were attributed to Homer, though modern scholarship regards them as a separate corpus. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey had a profound and lasting influence on later Greek literature and Western storytelling, shaping narrative technique, ethical ideas, and conceptions of heroism. The term "Homeric" is used to describe the language and style of his epics, and the figure of Homer remains a symbolic reference for the canon of ancient Greek poetry.