Homer facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Homer
Marble terminal bust of Homer. Roman copy of a lost Hellenistic original of the 2nd c. BC.
Native name	Ὅμηρος
Born	c. 8th century BC
Died	Ios
Language	Homeric Greek
Nationality	Greek
Genre	Epic
Subject	Epic cycle
Years active	fl. late 8th cent. BC
Notable works	Iliad Odyssey

Homer is the name of the Greek poet who wrote the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. These are the earliest works of Greek literature which have survived to the present day, and are among the greatest treasures of the ancient world. In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Homer is referred to as the "king of all poets".

History

Greece according to the Iliad

Homer and His Guide (1874) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Little is known about Homer. Some doubt he was a real person; others think he was a woman.

A legend has it that he was a blind poet, the son of the river Meles and the nymph Critheïs, who lived in Chios. Another tradition from the days of the Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste (daughter of Nestor) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus) were the parents of Homer.

Some ancient scholars believed Homer to have been an eyewitness to the Trojan War; others thought he had lived up to 500 years afterwards.

Herodotus said that Homer lived 400 years before his own time, which would place him at around 850 BC; but other ancient sources gave dates much closer to the time of the Trojan War.

Today, "the date of Homer" means the date of the writing down the oral poems, rather than the life of Homer. This is called the transcription date. The language suggests that the earliest possible date for the transcription is 800 BC, and the latest possible date is 600 AD.

Works

Homer's Iliad centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War. The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, back to his home after the fall of Troy. The poems are in Homeric Greek. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally and were put into written form at some point between the eighth and sixth centuries BC.

The first printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in Milan, Italy.

See also

In Spanish: Homero para niños

Images for kids

• 

  Part of an eleventh-century manuscript, "the Townley Homer". The writings on the top and right side are scholia.

• 

  Homer as depicted in the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle

• 

  A Reading from Homer (1885) by Lawrence Alma-Tadema