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Top 15 interesting facts about Homer

Originally published by Angelah on March 2020 and updated by Charity K on August 2022

Ancient accounts of Homer- image source: Wikipedia

Poetry. T.S Eliot said that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

Meet one of the greatest poets of all time; Homer, who is credited as Europe’s first poet. He was believed to be a court singer and a storyteller. Based on his dialect, some people believe that he was from Iona, though others say he was from the island of Chios. 

The war between the Trojans and the Greeks as illustrated by Homer in Iliad is probably what made him famous. In this war, the Trojans (led by Priam, his sons Hector, Paris and Hector’s wife Andromache) fought the Greeks (led by Achilles who is thought to be the greatest warrior in the world, Melanus king of Sparta, his brother Agamemnon, Odysseus king of Ithaca, Ajax the second great warrior and Aias the Great)

Here are some of the things that make Homer an interesting character in the world of poems:

1. Unknown year of birth. 

Homer, the famous Greek poet was born to Telemachus and Epikaste, though a record of his time of birth is not recorded and is not known as is estimated to be between the 12 and the 8 BC. It is said he died on the Island of Chios, and just like his unknown date of birth, his date of death is also unknown. 

2. The Iliad

In the poem, the Iliad, Homer talks about the chaotic events that took place in the city of Ilion during the Trojan war, especially the war between the Trojans and the Greeks in the last year of the war. Paris the son of Priam, kidnapped Helen, the daughter of Menelaus; thus causing the war. The Iliad had 15, 693 lines and in it are illustrations and mentions of several gods and goddesses, including Zeus, Hera, Athena, Poseidon, Apollo, Ares, and Aphrodite.

3. The Odyssey

Homer- Image source: Pixabay

The Iliad and the Odyssey are some of the famous works done by Homer. The two are performed and are loved by many to this day. The Odyssey tells a story of Odysseus and his journey after the Trojan War. Odysseus and his men encountered Scylla a monster with 6 heads and 12 tentacles and Charybdis, a whirlpool which they escaped narrowly, during their adventurous journey. All of his men died in the end in a shipwreck, leaving only Odysseus, who was captured seven years later. 

4. The blind poet.

Homer and his guide- Image source: Wikipedia

Homer, the son of Telemachus and Epikaste, was a singer and performer, therefore called a bard, some people believe that he was blind therefore referred to as the blind bard. It is not known whether the blindness story is true or is just about his name, which was unusual at the time, and which meant ‘hostage’ or ‘blind’. 

5. He used the earliest alphabet

Homer’s poems were believed to be recorded just soon after the alphabet was invented. Before that, his poetry would have otherwise had to be spoken instead of written! The first written poems were said to have been dictated by the poet between 8 and 6 BC.

6. Homeric Hymns

Homeric Hymns- Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

Other similar works by Homer, poems which ranged from only a few lines to hundreds; these poems, known as Homeric poems one of them being the Epic Cycle on the Trojan War, had the same dialect as Odyssey and Illiad.   

7. Was Homer real?

Because of very many disputed facts on Homer; like his place of birth, years of birth and death and the fact that there aren’t any biographical recordings of the man, some people think that he was a fictitious character drawn from the poems The Iliad and the Odyssey. It is believed that he was from Iona while others think he lived on the Island of Chios.

8. A poetic inspiration

There were places in Greece in around 3 BC where Homer was honored. It is said that his works; the earliest form of poetry in Europe, inspired many more works such as Inferno by Dante Alighieri, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, L. Frank Baum’s The Great Wizard of Oz and Ulysses by James Joyce among others. 

9. He was an influential leader 

In Plato’s The Republican, Homer is mentioned as an influential leader. Aristotle also commented about Homer saying he was a unique pet of his time. His poems are said to have been passed from generation to generation through oral tradition. 

10. The Epic Cycle

Homer- Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

He wrote a book of poems called the Epic Cycle which was a collection of poems, that illustrates the happenings of the Trojan war. He also the Homeric hymns, which is a collection of 33 Greek hymns celebrating individual gods. 

 Homer is a mysterious person. His work, however, has transcended generations and is still enjoyed by poem enthusiasts all over the world! 

11. Homer is one of the oldest scholars in history 

Photo by Wikimedia Commons – Wikimedia 

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 denounced as immoral. 

The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems are allegories. 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 it’s 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 of the poems that were culturally or linguistically difficult.

During the Hellenistic 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 scholars such as Eustathius of Thessalonica and John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions, and scholia to Homer, especially in the twelfth century. 

Eustathius’s commentary on the Iliad alone is massive, sprawling over nearly 4,000 oversized pages in the twenty-first century printed version, and his commentary on the Odyssey an additional nearly 2,000.

12. There was an attack on Homeric poems

In 1664, contradicting the widespread praise of Homer as the epitome of wisdom, François Hédelin, abbé d’Aubignac 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.  

13. Richard Bentley confirmed Homer existed

Photo by James Thornhill – Wikimedia 

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 Odysseus 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.

14. Homer after World War I

Photo by Wikimedia Commons – Wikimedia 

Following World War I, 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 and Albert Lord, 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.

15. Scholars agreed that

Iliad and the Odyssey are unified poems

Photo by Dolon Painter – Wikimedia 

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; others thought he had lived up to 500 years afterward. 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 has proposed a date for both poems to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics.  

Barry B. Powell dates the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey to sometime between 800 and 750 BC, based on the statement from Herodotus, 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, or literacy.

Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes the poetry of Hesiod 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 in 689 BC and the Sack of Thebes by Ashurbanipal in 663/4 BC.

At the other extreme, a few American scholars such as Gregory Nagy 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 ὅμηρος (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.

Homer Facts

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Homer Facts
Homer, the ancient Greek poet who wrote Iliad and Odyssey, was born approximately in the 8th or 9th century B.C. He was the son of Telemachus and Epikaste, and is believed to have been a story teller and court singer. Although there are various accounts of when Homer lived, he is credited as the first and the greatest epic poet, and the author of Europe's first known literature. It is believed that Homer lived in Iona, based upon his dialect but others suggest he lived on the island of Chios. It is also believed that Homer was blind, but proof one way or the other does not exist. Homer's epic poems Iliad and Odyssey were written during the era of the Trojan War, owing to their importance in Greek culture.
Homer's poem Iliad tells the story of the Trojan War, including the battle of Troy. In Greek mythology the battle of Troy is one of the most important historical events.
Iliad tells the story of Achilles and his wrath against King Agamemnon, who was the leader of the Greeks. Characters in the poem include Hector, Zeus, Helen of Troy, and Aeneas. The story highlights Achilles' bravery and the glorification of war.
Odyssey is the sequel to Iliad, in which Odysseus returns home following his cunning destruction of Troy. In this story Odysseus escapes Calypso, battles the Cyclops, survives Hades, and endures a number of trials before returning home to his wife Penelope.
It is said that Homer's Odyssey inspired many further highly acclaimed pieces of literature including Inferno (by Dante Alighieri), Don Quixote (by Miguel de Cervantes), Heart of Darkness (by Joseph Conrad), The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (by L. Frank Baum), and Ulysses (by James Joyce).
In Plato's work Republic, Homer is portrayed as the leader of Greek culture.
In Aristotle's work Poetics, he refers to Homer as unique when compared to the poets of his time in that he focused on a single theme.
Approximately 50 percent of all of Homer's work was in the form of speeches.
Homer is credited with the Homeric Hymns. These poems range from only a few lines to hundreds, and are composed with the same dialect as Iliad and Odyssey. His other notable work includes Epic Cycle, a book of poems about the Trojan War.
Scholarly studies of Homer and his work are some of the oldest, dating back hundreds of centuries.
In Homer's time, his poetry would have been spoken aloud as opposed to being written down. It was only later that they would have been written down. It is believed that Homer's poems were recorded soon after the alphabet was invented.
There is a statue of Homer in Munich, Germany outside the Bavarian State Library.
In the British Museum there is a marble relief created by Archelaus of Priene, believed to be from the 3rd century BCE, called the 'Apotheosis of Homer'. It was found in Italy but it is believed it was sculpted in Egypt.
Homer is believed to have died on the island Ios, but the year is unknown, just as his exact date of birth is unknown.


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Interesting facts about Homer

Homer - an ancient Greek poet, wrote the poems "Odyssey" about the journey of King Odysseus of Ithaca, "Iliad" about the Trojan War. We present interesting facts about Homer.

  1. Almost nothing is known about the life of Homer, the most famous poet of antiquity. Historians dispute the date of his birth. Many believe that he was a witness to the events he describes. But more serious arguments are provided by those who believe that the Iliad and the Odyssey were written around the 8th century. BC e. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus also agrees with this date. nine0010
  2. Homer's birthplace is also unknown. Seven cities dispute the right to be called the birthplace of the poet.
  3. More reliable information has been preserved about the place of Homer's death. This is the island of Ios. It is located in the Aegean Sea.
  4. There is a version that Homer is a fictional character, and his works are written by several authors. Modern linguists, using computer analysis, have proven that the Iliad and the Odyssey were written by the same person.
  5. About ten different biographies of Homer have come down to us. None of them are reliable. The image of the poet is covered with myths. nine0010
  6. The language of the Iliad and the Odyssey does not answer the question in which locality these works were written. Homer wrote his works in the Koine language (ancient Greek language). The New Testament is also written in Koine. The Koine language is also sometimes referred to as "Biblical Greek".
  7. Homer's texts were first put on paper in the 6th century BC. Greek children learned to read from these works.
  8. Usually Homer is portrayed as blind. But this fact has not been proven. It is possible that this is simply a tribute to the ancient tradition, where soothsayers and storytellers were often blind, which emphasized their chosenness. Translated from the Greek "Homer" means "blind". Perhaps this is what made the descendants consider the poet blind. Perhaps he was blind. nine0010
  9. In antiquity, Homer was the most revered poet. He was considered the founder of philosophy, history, geography and other sciences.
  10. The popular expression "Homeric laughter" is directly related to the Iliad, in which Homer describes uncontrollable and deafening laughter.
  11. The heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey are perceived by modern readers as mythological characters. However, the archaeological finds of the German entrepreneur Heinrich Schliemann proved that many of the events described in Homer's poems actually happened. nine0010
  12. The first translator of Homer's works into Russian was Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov. The most famous Russian translator of Homer is Nikolai Gnedich.
  13. Homer did not write down his poems. He sang them to professional aedam (singers), who memorized the text and then performed it, accompanying themselves on stringed instruments. In honor of Homer, the Aeds were often called Homerids.
  14. Homer's poems are written in six-meter hexameter. This verse size is best suited for recitation, it goes back to folklore traditions. nine0010
  15. Homer's works were passed from mouth to mouth, so there is no single text of his poems. The Odyssey has multiple endings.
  16. The Iliad tells about the events of the Trojan War between the Trojans and the Greeks. It all started with the fact that women could not figure out which of them was more beautiful. They invited Paris, the son of the ruler of Troy, to judge. Paris awarded the victory to the wife of the Greek king Minelaus.
  17. In The Odyssey, Homer describes Odysseus' journey to Ithaca after the Trojan War; Odysseus's journey to his homeland took 10 years. At home, his wife Penelope was waiting for him for 20 years (the siege of Troy lasted ten years and Odysseus returned to Ithaca for ten years). nine0010
  18. In the Iliad, all the actions are described sequentially, even if it is clear from the plot that they occur simultaneously. The composition of the Odyssey is more complex. There are passages in the poem where the characters talk about what happened before. The heroes of the Odyssey themselves are more human, they have doubts and mistakes.
  19. Historians know little about the Trojan War. She became famous precisely because of Homer.
  20. Plutarch writes that Alexander the Great was a great admirer of Homer.
  21. The action of Homer's poems takes place in the Bronze Age, and Homer lived at a time when iron weapons were already being made. In the works of Homer, warriors use iron spears.
  22. On the planet Mercury, a crater is named after Homer.
  23. In 2004, the film "Troy" was shot based on the works of Homer. This is one of the most expensive projects in the history of cinema. The role of Achilles was played by actor Brad Pitt. The film won an Oscar for best costumes.

Homer - biography, interesting facts, photo

Homer (9th-8th century BC) - ancient Greek poet-storyteller, creator of the epic poems "Iliad" (the oldest monument of European literature) and "Odyssey". About half of the ancient Greek literary papyri discovered are passages from Homer.

There are many interesting facts in Homer's biography, which we will discuss in this article.

So, before you is a brief biography of Homer.

Homer's biography

Today nothing is known for certain about Homer's life. Biographers are still arguing about the date and place of the poet's birth. nine0005

It is believed that Homer was born in the 9th-8th centuries. BC. According to various historians, he could have been born in cities such as Salamis, Colophon, Smyrna, Athens, Argos, Rhodes or Ios.

Homer's writings describe the most ancient history of the world. They lack information about contemporaries, which makes it impossible to calculate the life span of the author.

Today there are many medieval documents that describe the biography of Homer. However, modern historians question these sources due to the fact that they mention many episodes when the life of the narrator was directly influenced by the gods. nine0005

For example, according to one of the legends, Homer lost his sight after he saw the sword of Achilles. In order to somehow console him, the goddess Thetis endowed him with the gift of singing.

The biographical works of the poet say that Homer got his name as a result of acquired blindness. Translated from ancient Greek, his name literally means “blind”.

It is worth noting that in some ancient books it is said that they began to call him Homer when he was not blind, but on the contrary, he began to see. According to a number of ancient biographers, he was born to the woman Cripheida, who named him Melesigenes. nine0005

As an adult, the poet often received invitations to feasts from officials and wealthy people. In addition, he regularly appeared at city meetings and markets.

There is evidence that Homer traveled a lot and enjoyed great prestige in society. From this it follows that he was hardly the impoverished wanderer that some biographers portray him to be.

There is a very widespread opinion that the works "Odyssey", "Iliad" and "Homeric hymns" are the work of various authors, while Homer was only a performer. nine0005

This conclusion is explained by the fact that the man belonged to a family of singers. It is worth noting that at that time many professions were often passed down from generation to generation.

Thanks to this, any member of the family could perform under the name of Homer. If we assume that everything was really so, then this helps to explain the reason for the different periods of creation of the poems.

Becoming a poet

According to the historian Herodotus, Homer lived in the same house with his mother in Smyrna. In this city, he studied at the Femia School, showing good academic abilities. nine0005

After the death of his mentor, Homer took over the school and started teaching students. Over time, he wanted to better know the world around him, as a result of which he went on a sea voyage.

In the course of his travels, Homer wrote down various stories, rituals and legends. Upon arrival in Ithaca, his health deteriorated. Later, he set off to travel the world on foot, continuing to collect material.

Herodotus reports that the poet finally lost his sight in the city of Colophon. It was during that period of his biography that he began to call himself Homer. nine0005

At the same time, modern scientists treat the history of Herodotus with distrust, however, as well as the works of other ancient authors.

The Homeric Question

In 1795, Friedrich August Wolf presented a theory that became known as the "Homeric Question". Its essence was as follows: since poetry in the era of Homer was in oral form, a blind storyteller could not become the author of such complex works.

Medieval illustration for the Iliad

According to Wolff, the final form of the work was obtained thanks to the efforts of other authors. Since that time, Homer's biographers have been divided into 2 camps: "analysts" who support Wolff's theory, and "unitarians" who say that the works belong to one author - Homer. nine0005

Blindness

Many connoisseurs of Homer's work deny his blindness. They argue this by the fact that at that time the sages were often called blind in the sense that they were deprived of ordinary vision, but were able to look into the essence of things.

Thus, the word "blindness" was synonymous with wisdom, and Homer was undoubtedly considered one of the wisest people.

Works

The surviving ancient scrolls say that Homer was an almost omniscient person. In his poems there is information relating to all areas of life. nine0005

An interesting fact is that Plutarch claimed that Alexander the Great never parted with the Iliad. And according to the "Odyssey" in Greece, children were taught to read.

Lawrence Alma Tadema "Reading Homer"

Homer is considered the author of not only the Iliad and the Odyssey, but also the comedy Margaret and the Homeric Hymns. Also, a cycle of works is attributed to his pen: "Cypria", "The Capture of Ilion", "Ethiopides", "Small Iliad", "Returns".

Homer's writings are distinguished by a unique language, unlike the works of other authors. His manner of presenting the material is not only interesting, but also easily digestible. nine0005

Death

According to one legend, shortly before his death, Homer went to the island of Ios. There he met two fishermen who asked him the following riddle: "We have what we did not catch, and what we caught, we threw away."

The sage plunged into long reflections, but could not find the answer. As it turned out, the young men were catching lice, not fish.

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