Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey

To the Greeks Homer was simply "the poet". His two poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were studied at school, recited at festivals and quoted as authorities in politics and religion. They are still the starting point of European literature.

Who was Homer?

The ancients pictured a blind singer from Ionia; seven cities, including Smyrna and the island of Chios, claimed to be his birthplace. In fact we know nothing for certain. The so-called Homeric question, debated since the 19th century, asks whether the poems are the work of one author, of two, or of a long tradition. Most scholars now think they grew out of the oral poetry of the aoidoi, professional singers who improvised on traditional patterns, and took their present form between the 8th and 7th centuries BC, when the Greeks adopted the alphabet.

How they are made

The poems are in hexameters, lines of six feet. To improvise, the singers used fixed formulas: epithets ("swift-footed Achilles", "grey-eyed Athena", "rosy-fingered Dawn") and whole typical scenes such as the meal, the arming of the hero or the sacrifice. That is why many lines repeat. The division into 24 books, one per letter of the Greek alphabet, goes back to the scholars of Alexandria.

The Iliad

The Iliad (from Ilion, another name for Troy) covers about fifty days in the tenth year of the Trojan War. Its theme is the wrath of Achilles.

1. Agamemnon takes the captive Briseis from Achilles; Achilles withdraws from battle and his mother Thetis persuades Zeus to let the Greeks be defeated.
2. The Trojans, led by Hector, reach the Greek ships and set them on fire.
3. Patroclus fights in Achilles's armour and is killed by Hector.
4. Achilles returns to battle, kills Hector and abuses his body.
5. King Priam ransoms his son's body; the poem ends with Hector's funeral.

The Odyssey

The Odyssey tells of Odysseus's return to Ithaca. It is not told in order: it opens with his son Telemachus setting out for news of his father, then shows Odysseus held by the nymph Calypso, and only at the court of the Phaeacians does the hero tell his adventures in a long flashback (books IX-XII). The last part is his return to Ithaca and revenge on the suitors.

In English

Famous English versions include those of George Chapman (1611), Alexander Pope (1715-1726), and in modern times Richmond Lattimore, Robert Fagles and Emily Wilson, the first woman to publish an English translation of the Odyssey (2017).

See also ancient Greek literature and myths for schools.