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Works attributed to Homer

Ancient biographical traditions

History of Homeric scholarship

Ancient
Modern
Contemporary

Historicity of the Homeric epics and Homeric society

Style and language

Textual transmission

See also

Notes

Sources

Selected bibliography

Editions
Interlinear translations
English translations
General works on Homer
Influential readings and interpretations
Commentaries
Dating the Homeric poems
Further reading
External links

Homer

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Several terms redirect here. For other uses, see Homer (disambiguation), Homerus
(disambiguation), and Homeric (disambiguation).
Homer
Marble terminal bust of Homer. Roman copy of a lost Hellenistic original of the 2nd
c. BC.
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[1]
Language Homeric Greek
Genre Epic
Subject Epic Cycle
Notable works

Iliad
Odyssey

Homer (/ˈhoʊmər/; Ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος [hómɛːros], Hómēros; born c. 8th century
BC) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey,
two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is
considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history.[2]

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, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a
mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the
predominant influence is Eastern Ionic.[3][4] Most researchers believe that the
poems were originally transmitted orally.[5] Despite being predominantly known for
its tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems also contains instances of comedy
and laughter.[6]

Homer's epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering
ideals of heroism, glory, and honor.[7] To Plato, Homer was simply the one who "has
taught Greece" (τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν, tēn Helláda pepaídeuken).[8][9] In Dante
Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all
poets;[10] in the preface to his translation of the Iliad, Alexander Pope
acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets".[11]
From antiquity to the present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of
literature, music, art, and film.[12]

The question of by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and
Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars remain divided as to
whether the two works are the product of a single author.[13] It is thought that
the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh
century BC.[13] Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity;
the most widespread account was that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of
central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these
accounts legendary.[14]
Works attributed to Homer
Homer and His Guide (1874) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Today, only the Iliad and the Odyssey are associated with the name 'Homer'. In
antiquity, a large number of other works were sometimes attributed to him,
including the Homeric Hymns, the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, several epigrams, the
Little Iliad, the Nostoi, the Thebaid, the Cypria, the Epigoni, the comic mini-epic
Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog–Mouse War"), the Margites, the Capture of Oechalia,
and the Phocais. These claims are not considered authentic today and were by no
means universally accepted in the ancient world. As with the multitude of legends
surrounding Homer's life, they indicate little more than the centrality of Homer to
ancient Greek culture.[15][16][17]
Ancient biographical traditions
Further information: Ancient accounts of Homer

Some ancient claims about Homer were established early and repeated often. They
include that Homer was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the
blind bard Demodocus),[18][19] that he resided at Chios, that he was the son of the
river Meles and the nymph Critheïs, that he was a wandering bard, that he composed
a varying list of other works (the "Homerica"), that he died either in Ios or after
failing to solve a riddle set by fishermen, and various explanations for the name
"Homer" (Ὅμηρος, Hómēros).[18] 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.[20][21]

The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the Life of Homer by the
Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod.[1][22]

In the early fourth century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional account of a poetry

contest at Chalcis with both Homer and Hesiod. Homer was expected to win, and
answered all of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. Then, each of the poets
was invited to recite the best passage from their work. Hesiod selected the
beginning of Works and Days: "When the Pleiades born of Atlas ... all in due
season". Homer chose a description of Greek warriors in formation, facing the foe,
taken from the Iliad. Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor, the judge awarded
Hesiod the prize; the poet who praised husbandry, he said, was greater than the one
who told tales of battles and slaughter.[23]
History of Homeric scholarship
Further information: Homeric scholarship and Homeric Question
Ancient
Part of an eleventh-century manuscript, "the Townley Homer". The writings on the
top and right side are scholia.

The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to
antiquity.[24][25][26] Nonetheless, the aims of Homeric studies have changed over
the course of the millennia.[24] 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.[26] The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to
have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems are allegories.[26] The Iliad
and the Odyssey were widely used as school texts in ancient Greek and Hellenistic
cultures.[24][26][27] They were the first literary works taught to all students.
[27] The Iliad, particularly its first few books, was far more intently studied
than the Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Roman periods.[27]

As a result of the poems' prominence in classical Greek education, extensive

commentaries on them developed to explain parts that were culturally or
linguistically difficult.[24][26] 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.[26] Perhaps
partially because of the Homeric poems' extensive use in education, many authors
believed that Homer's original purpose had been to educate.[26] Homer's wisdom
became so widely praised that he began to acquire the image of almost a
prototypical philosopher.[26] Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius of Thessalonica
and John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions and scholia to Homer, especially
in the twelfth century.[28][26] Eustathius's commentary on the Iliad alone is
massive, sprawling over nearly 4,000 oversized pages in a twenty-first century
printed version and his commentary on the Odyssey an additional nearly 2,000.[26]
Modern
Homer as depicted in the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle

In 1488, the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published the editio princeps
of the Homeric poems.[26] The earliest modern Homeric scholars started with the
same basic approaches towards the Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity.[26][25]
[24] The allegorical interpretation of the Homeric poems that had been so prevalent
in antiquity returned to become the prevailing view of the Renaissance.[26]
Renaissance humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise poet, whose writings
contain hidden wisdom, disguised through allegory.[26] In western Europe during the
Renaissance, Virgil was more widely read than Homer and Homer was often seen
through a Virgilian lens.[29]

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.[25] 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.[25] 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
Odysseis 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."[25]

Friedrich August Wolf's Prolegomena ad Homerum, published in 1795, argued that much
of the material later incorporated into the Iliad and the Odyssey was originally
composed in the tenth century BC in the form of short, separate oral songs,[30][31]
[25] which passed through oral tradition for roughly four hundred years before
being assembled into prototypical versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey in the
sixth century BC by literate authors.[30][31][25] After being written down, Wolf
maintained that the two poems were extensively edited, modernized, and eventually
shaped into their present state as artistic unities.[30][31][25] Wolf and the
"Analyst" school, which led the field in the nineteenth century, sought to recover
the original, authentic poems which were thought to be concealed by later
excrescences.[30][31][25][32]

Within the Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which
held that the Iliad and the Odyssey were put together from a large number of short,
independent songs,[25] and proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held that
Homer had originally composed shorter versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which
later poets expanded and revised.[25] A small group of scholars opposed to the
Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw the later additions as superior, the work of a
single inspired poet.[30][31][25] By around 1830, the central preoccupations of
Homeric scholars, dealing with whether or not "Homer" actually existed, when and
how the Homeric poems originated, how they were transmitted, when and how they were
finally written down, and their overall unity, had been dubbed "the Homeric
Question".[25]

Following World War I, the Analyst school began to fall out of favor among Homeric
scholars.[25] It did not die out entirely, but it came to be increasingly seen as a
discredited dead end.[25] 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.[33][32][25]
This theory found very wide scholarly acceptance[33][32][25] 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.[32] Many scholars concluded that the "Homeric Question" had
finally been answered.[25]

Meanwhile, the 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge the gap between the 'Analysts' and
'Unitarians'.[34][35] The Neoanalysts sought to trace the relationships between the
Homeric poems and other epic poems, which have now been lost, but of which modern
scholars do possess some patchy knowledge.[25] Neoanalysts hold that knowledge of
earlier versions of the epics can be derived from anomalies of structure and detail
in the surviving versions of the Iliad and Odyssey. These anomalies point to
earlier versions of the Iliad in which Ajax played a more prominent role, in which
the Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different characters, and in which
Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They point to earlier
versions of the Odyssey in which Telemachus went in search of news of his father
not to Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Crete, in which Telemachus met up
with his father in Crete and conspired with him to return to Ithaca disguised as
the soothsayer Theoclymenus, and in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier
in the narrative and conspired with him in the destruction of the suitors.[36]
Contemporary

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."[37][38][39][25]
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.[25] It is also generally agreed that each poem was
composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral
traditions.[25] 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.
[25]

Some ancient scholars believed Homer to have been an eyewitness to the Trojan War;
others thought he had lived up to 500 years afterwards.[40] Contemporary scholars
continue to debate the date of the poems.[41][42][25] A long history of oral
transmission lies behind the composition of the poems, complicating the search for
a precise date.[43] At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed a date for both
poems to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics.[41][42]
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.[44]

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.[45][46][25] 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.[25] 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.[41][42][25]

"'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.
[47][48]
Historicity of the Homeric epics and Homeric society
Main article: Historicity of the Iliad
Greece according to the Iliad

Scholars continue to debate questions such as whether the Trojan War actually took
place – and if so when and where – and to what extent the society depicted by Homer
is based on his own or one which was, even at the time of the poems' composition,
known only as legends. The Homeric epics are largely set in the east and center of
the Mediterranean, with some scattered references to Egypt, Ethiopia and other
distant lands, in a warlike society that resembles that of the Greek world slightly
before the hypothesized date of the poems' composition.[49][50][51][52]

In ancient Greek chronology, the sack of Troy was dated to 1184 BC. By the
nineteenth century, there was widespread scholarly skepticism that the Trojan War
had ever happened and that Troy had even existed, but in 1873 Heinrich Schliemann
announced to the world that he had discovered the ruins of Homer's Troy at
Hissarlik in modern Turkey. Some contemporary scholars think the destruction of
Troy VIIa c. 1220 BC was the origin of the myth of the Trojan War, others that the
poem was inspired by multiple similar sieges that took place over the centuries.
[53]

Most scholars now agree that the Homeric poems depict customs and elements of the
material world that are derived from different periods of Greek history.[32][54]
[55] For instance, the heroes in the poems use bronze weapons, characteristic of
the Bronze Age in which the poems are set, rather than the later Iron Age during
which they were composed;[32][54][55] yet the same heroes are cremated (an Iron Age
practice) rather than buried (as they were in the Bronze Age).[32][54][55] In some
parts of the Homeric poems, heroes are described as carrying large shields like
those used by warriors during the Mycenaean period,[32] but, in other places, they
are instead described carrying the smaller shields that were commonly used during
the time when the poems were written in the early Iron Age.[32] In the Iliad
10.260–265, Odysseus is described as wearing a helmet made of boar's tusks. Such
helmets were not worn in Homer's time, but were commonly worn by aristocratic
warriors between 1600 and 1150 BC.[56][57][58]

The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris and continued

archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding of Aegean
civilisation, which in many ways resembles the ancient Near East more than the
society described by Homer.[59] Some aspects of the Homeric world are simply made
up;[32] for instance, the Iliad 22.145–56 describes there being two springs that
run near the city of Troy, one that runs steaming hot and the other that runs icy
cold.[32] It is here that Hector takes his final stand against Achilles.[32]
Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence that springs of this
description ever actually existed.[32]
Style and language
See also: Homeric Greek
Detail of The Parnassus (painted 1509–1510) by Raphael, depicting Homer wearing a
crown of laurels atop Mount Parnassus, with Dante Alighieri on his right and Virgil
on his left

The Homeric epics are written in an artificial literary language or 'Kunstsprache'

only used in epic hexameter poetry. Homeric Greek shows features of multiple
regional Greek dialects and periods, but is fundamentally based on Ionic Greek, in
keeping with the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests
that the Iliad was composed slightly before the Odyssey, and that Homeric formulae
preserve older features than other parts of the poems.[60][61]
The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter; ancient Greek metre was
quantity-based rather than stress-based.[62][63] Homer frequently uses set phrases
such as epithets ('crafty Odysseus', 'rosy-fingered Dawn', 'owl-eyed Athena',
etc.), Homeric formulae ('and then answered [him/her], Agamemnon, king of men',
'when the early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light', 'thus he/she spoke'),
simile, type scenes, ring composition and repetition. These habits aid the
extemporizing bard, and are characteristic of oral poetry. For instance, the main
words of a Homeric sentence are generally placed towards the beginning, whereas
literate poets like Virgil or Milton use longer and more complicated syntactical
structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique
is called parataxis.[64]

The so-called 'type scenes' (typische Szenen), were named by Walter Arend in 1933.
He noted that Homer often, when describing frequently recurring activities such as
eating, praying, fighting and dressing, used blocks of set phrases in sequence that
were then elaborated by the poet. The 'Analyst' school had considered these
repetitions as un-Homeric, whereas Arend interpreted them philosophically. Parry
and Lord noted that these conventions are found in many other cultures.[65][66]

'Ring composition' or chiastic structure (when a phrase or idea is repeated at both

the beginning and end of a story, or a series of such ideas first appears in the
order A, B, C ... before being reversed as ... C, B, A) has been observed in the
Homeric epics. Opinion differs as to whether these occurrences are a conscious
artistic device, a mnemonic aid or a spontaneous feature of human storytelling.[67]
[68]

Both of the Homeric poems begin with an invocation to the Muse.[69] In the Iliad,
the poet beseeches her to sing of "the anger of Achilles",[69] and, in the Odyssey,
he asks her to tell of "the man of many ways".[69] A similar opening was later
employed by Virgil in his Aeneid.[69]
Textual transmission
A Reading from Homer (1885) by Lawrence Alma-Tadema

The orally transmitted Homeric poems were put into written form at some point
between the eighth and sixth centuries BC. Some scholars believe that they were
dictated to a scribe by the poet and that our inherited versions of the Iliad and
Odyssey were in origin orally-dictated texts.[70] Albert Lord noted that the Balkan
bards that he was studying revised and expanded their songs in their process of
dictating.[71] Some scholars hypothesize that a similar process of revision and
expansion occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down.[72][73]

Other scholars hold that, after the poems were created in the eighth century, they
continued to be orally transmitted with considerable revision until they were
written down in the sixth century.[74] After textualisation, the poems were each
divided into 24 rhapsodes, today referred to as books, and labelled by the letters
of the Greek alphabet. Most scholars attribute the book divisions to the
Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria, in Egypt.[75] Some trace the divisions back
further to the Classical period.[76] Very few credit Homer himself with the
divisions.[77]

In antiquity, it was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and
organised in Athens in the late sixth century BC by Peisistratos (died 528/7 BC),
in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension".[78][26] The
idea that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and first written
down during the reign of Peisistratos is referenced by the first-century BC Roman
orator Cicero and is also referenced in a number of other surviving sources,
including two ancient Lives of Homer.[26] From around 150 BC, the texts of the
Homeric poems seem to have become relatively established. After the establishment
of the Library of Alexandria, Homeric scholars such as Zenodotus of Ephesus,
Aristophanes of Byzantium and in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped
establish a canonical text.[79]

The first printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in Milan, Italy. Today
scholars use medieval manuscripts, papyri and other sources; some argue for a
"multi-text" view, rather than seeking a single definitive text. The nineteenth-
century edition of Arthur Ludwich mainly follows Aristarchus's work, whereas van
Thiel's (1991, 1996) follows the medieval vulgate.[clarification needed] Others,
such as Martin West (1998–2000) or T. W. Allen, fall somewhere between these two
extremes.[79]
See also

Ancient Greece portaliconPoetry portalLiterature portal

Achaeans (Homer)
Aeneid
Bibliomancy
Catalogue of Ships
Creophylus of Samos
Cyclic Poets
Deception of Zeus
Epithets in Homer
Geography of the Odyssey
Greek mythology
Hector
Homeric psychology
Homeric scholarship
Homer's Ithaca
List of Homeric characters
Peisistratos
Sortes Homericae
Tabulae Iliacae
Telemachy
The Golden Bough
Trojan Battle Order
Trojan War in literature and the arts
Venetus A Manuscript

Notes

Lefkowitz, Mary R. (2013). The Lives of the Greek Poets. A&C Black. pp. 14–30. ISBN
978-1472503077.
"Learn about Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved
31 August 2021.
Hose, Martin; Schenker, David (2015). A Companion to Greek Literature. John Wiley &
Sons. p. 445. ISBN 978-1118885956.
Miller, D. Gary (2013). Ancient Greek Dialects and Early Authors: Introduction to
the Dialect Mixture in Homer, with Notes on Lyric and Herodotus. Walter de Gruyter.
p. 351. ISBN 978-1614512950. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
Ahl, Frederick; Roisman, Hanna (1996). The Odyssey Re-formed. Cornell University
Press. ISBN 978-0801483356. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
Bell, Robert H. "Homer’s humor: laughter in the Iliad." hand 1 (2007): 596.
Rutherford, R. B. (2010). Homer: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide.
Oxford University Press. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-19-980510-5.
Too, Yun Lee (2010). The Idea of the Library in the Ancient World. OUP Oxford. p.
86. ISBN 978-0199577804. Retrieved 22 November 2016.
MacDonald, Dennis R. (1994). Christianizing Homer: The Odyssey, Plato, and the Acts
of Andrew. Oxford University Press. p. 17. ISBN 978-0195358629. Archived from the
original on 30 June 2017. Retrieved 22 November 2016.
Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto IV, 86–88 (Longfellow's translation):

Him with that falchion in his hand behold,

Who comes before the three, even as their lord.
That one is Homer, Poet sovereign;
Alexander Pope's Preface to his translation of the Iliad:
"Homer is universally allowed to have had the greatest invention of any writer
whatever. The praise of judgment Virgil has justly contested with him, and others
may have their pretensions as to particular excellencies; but his invention remains
yet unrivalled. Nor is it a wonder if he has ever been acknowledged the greatest of
poets, who most excelled in that which is the very foundation of poetry."
Latacz, Joachim (1996). Homer, His Art and His World. University of Michigan Press.
ISBN 978-0472083534. Retrieved 22 November 2016.
Croally, Neil; Hyde, Roy (2011). Classical Literature: An Introduction. Routledge.
p. 26. ISBN 978-1136736629. Retrieved 23 November 2016.
Wilson, Nigel (2013). Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece. Routledge. p. 366. ISBN 978-
1136788000. Retrieved 22 November 2016.
Romilly, Jacqueline de (1985). A Short History of Greek Literature. University of
Chicago Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0226143125. Retrieved 22 November 2016.
Graziosi 2002, p. 15
Kelly, Adrian D. "Homerica". In Finkelberg (2012).
doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe0606
Graziosi, Barbara; Haubold, Johannes (2005). Homer: The Resonance of Epic. A&C
Black. pp. 24–26. ISBN 978-0715632826.
Graziosi 2002, pp. 165–168.
Graziosi 2002, p. 138
Odyssey, 8:64ff.
"Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica" (Contest of Homer and Hesiod)
Parke, Herbert William (1967). Greek Oracles. pp. 136–137 citing the Certamen, 12.
Kelly, Adrian D. "Biographies of Homer". In Finkelberg (2012).
doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe0243
West, M. L. Theogony & Works and Days. Oxford University Press. p. xx.
Dickey, Eleanor. "Scholarship, Ancient". In Finkelberg (2012).
doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1307
West, M. L. (December 2011). "The Homeric Question Today". Proceedings of the
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Salvatore (eds.). The Classical Tradition. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London,
England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. pp. 449–452. ISBN 978-0-
674-03572-0.
Hunter, Richard L. (2018). The Measure of Homer: The Ancient Reception of the Iliad
and the Odyssey. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 4–7. ISBN 978-
1-108-42831-6.
Kaldellis, Anthony. "Scholarship, Byzantine". In Finkelberg (2012).
doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1308
Heiden, Bruce. "Scholarship, Renaissance through 17th Century". In Finkelberg
(2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1310
Heiden, Bruce. "Scholarship, 18th Century". In Finkelberg (2012).
doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1311
Heiden, Bruce. "Scholarship, 19th Century". In Finkelberg (2012).
doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1312
Taplin, Oliver (1986). "2: Homer". In Boardman, John; Griffin, Jasper; Murray,
Oswyn (eds.). The Oxford History of the Classical World. Oxford, England: Oxford
University Press. pp. 50–77. ISBN 978-0198721123.
Foley, John Miles (1988). The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology.
Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0253342607.
Heiden, Bruce. "Scholarship, 20th Century". In Finkelberg (2012).
doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1313
Edwards, Mark W. "Neoanalysis". In Finkelberg (2012).
doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe0968
Reece, Steve. "The Cretan Odyssey: A Lie Truer than Truth". American Journal of
Philology 115 (1994) 157–173. The_Cretan_Odyssey
West, M. L. (1999). "The Invention of Homer". Classical Quarterly. 49 (2): 364–382.
doi:10.1093/cq/49.2.364. JSTOR 639863.
West, Martin L. "Homeric Question". In Finkelberg (2012).
doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe0605
Latacz, Joachim; Bierl, Anton; Olson, S. Douglas (2015). "New Trends in Homeric
Scholarship" in Homer's Iliad: The Basel Commentary. De Gruyter. ISBN 978-
1614517375.
Saïd, Suzanne (2011). Homer and the Odyssey. OUP Oxford. pp. 14–17. ISBN 978-
0199542840.
Graziosi 2002, pp. 90–92
Fowler, Robert; Fowler, Robert Louis (2004). The Cambridge Companion to Homer.
Cambridge University Press. pp. 220–232. ISBN 978-0521012461.
Burgess, Jonathan S. (2003). The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic
Cycle. JHU Press. pp. 49–53. ISBN 978-0801874819.
Powell, Barry B. (1996). Homer and the Origins of the Greek Alphabet. Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 217–222. ISBN 978-0-521-58907-9.
Hall, Jonathan M. (2002). Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture. University of
Chicago Press. pp. 235–236. ISBN 978-0226313290.
West, Martin L. "Date of Homer". In Finkelberg (2012).
doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe0330
Graziosi 2002, pp. 51–89.
West, M. L. (1997). The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry
and Myth. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 622.
Raaflaub, Kurt A. "Historicity of Homer". In Finkelberg (2012).
doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe0601
Finley, Moses I. (1991). The World of Odysseus. Penguin. ISBN 978-0140136869.
Wees, Hans van (2009). War and Violence in Ancient Greece. ISD LLC. ISBN 978-
1910589298.
Morris, Ian (1986). "The Use and Abuse of Homer". Classical Antiquity. 5 (1): 81–
138. doi:10.2307/25010840. JSTOR 25010840.
Dowden, Ken; Livingstone, Niall (2011). A Companion to Greek Mythology. John Wiley
& Sons. p. 440. ISBN 978-1444396935.
Sacks, David; Murray, Oswyn; Brody, Lisa R. (2014). Encyclopedia of the Ancient
Greek World. Infobase Publishing. p. 356. ISBN 978-1438110202.
Morris & Powell 1997, pp. 434–435
Wood, Michael (1996). In Search of the Trojan War. Berkeley, California: University
of California Press. p. 130. ISBN 978-0-520-21599-3. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
Schofield, Louise (2007). The Mycenaeans. Los Angeles, California: The J. Paul
Getty Museum. p. 119. ISBN 978-0-89236-867-9. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
Everson, Tim (2004). Warfare in Ancient Greece: Arms and Armour from the Heroes of
Homer to Alexander the Great. Brimscombe Port: The History Press. pp. 9–10. ISBN
978-0-7524-9506-4. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
Morris & Powell 1997, p. 625.
Willi, Andreas. "Language, Homeric". In Finkelberg (2012).
doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe0792
Bakker, Egbert J. (2010). A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language. John Wiley &
Sons. p. 401. ISBN 978-1444317404.
Edwards, Mark W. "Meter". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe0913
Nussbaum, G.B. (1986). Homer's Metre: A Practical Guide for Reading Greek Hexameter
Poetry. Bristol Classical Press. ISBN 978-0862921729.
Edwards, Mark W. "Style". In Finkelberg (2012). doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1377
Reece, Steve T. "Type-Scenes". In Finkelberg (2012).
doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1488
Edwards, MW (1992). "Homer and Oral Tradition: The Type-Scene". Oral Tradition. 7:
284–330.
Stanley, Keith (2014). The Shield of Homer: Narrative Structure in the Illiad.
Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1400863372.
Minchin, Elizabeth. "Ring Composition". In Finkelberg (2012).
doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1287
Adler, Eve (2003). Vergil's Empire: Political Thought in the Aeneid. Lanham,
Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-7425-2167-4.
Steve Reece, "Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: From Oral Performance to Written Text", in
Mark Amodio (ed.), New Directions in Oral Theory (Tempe: Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, 2005) 43–89.
Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, 1960).
Kirk, G. S. (1976). Homer and the Oral Tradition. Cambridge University Press. p.
117. ISBN 978-0521213097.
Foley, John Miles. "Oral Dictated Texts". In Finkelberg (2012).
doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1029
Nagy, Gregory (1996). Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond. Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 978-0521558488.
U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Homerische Untersuchungen (Berlin, 1884) 369; R.
Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship (Oxford, 1968) 116–117.
West, Martin L. "Book Division". In Finkelberg (2012).
doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe0253; S. West, The Ptolemaic Papyri of Homer
(Cologne, 1967) 18–25.
P. Mazon, Introduction à l'Iliade (Paris, 1912) 137–140; C. H. Whitman, Homer and
the Heroic Tradition (Cambridge [Massachusetts], 1958) 282–283; G. P. Goold, "Homer
and the Alphabet", TAPA 96 (1960) 272–291; K. Stanley, The Shield of Homer
(Princeton, 1993) 37, 249ff.
Jensen, Minna Skafte (1980). The Homeric Question and the Oral-formulaic Theory.
Museum Tusculanum Press. p. 128. ISBN 978-8772890968.

Haslam, Michael. "Text and Transmission". In Finkelberg (2012).

doi:10.1002/9781444350302.wbhe1413

Sources

Finkelberg, Margalit, ed. (2012). The Homer Encyclopedia. Wiley.

doi:10.1002/9781444350302. ISBN 9781405177689.
Graziosi, Barbara (2002). Inventing Homer: The Early Perception of Epic.
Cambridge Classical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-
0521809665.
Morris, Ian; Powell, Barry B., eds. (1997). A New Companion to Homer. Leiden:
Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-09989-0.

Selected bibliography
Editions

Texts in Homeric Greek

Demetrius Chalcondyles editio princeps, Florence, 1488

the Aldine editions (1504 and 1517)
1st ed. with comments, Micyllus and Camerarius, Basel, 1535, 1541 (improved
text), 1551 (incl. the Batrachomyomachia)
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, D. B. (Odyssey xiii–xxiv. with appendices, Oxford, 1901)
 Monro, D. B. and Allen, T. W. (Iliad), and Allen (Odyssey, 1908, Oxford).
D. B. Monro and T. W. Allen 1917–1920, Homeri Opera (5 volumes: Iliad=3rd
edition, Odyssey=2nd edition), Oxford. ISBN 0-19-814528-4, 0-19-814529-2, 0-19-
814531-4, 0-19-814532-2, 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
P. von der Mühll 1993, Homeri Odyssea, Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-71432-7
M. L. West 1998–2000, Homeri Ilias (2 volumes), Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-
71431-9, 3-598-71435-1
M. L. West 2017, Homerus Odyssea, Berlin/Boston. ISBN 3-11-042539-4

Interlinear translations

The Iliad of Homer a Parsed Interlinear, Handheldclassics.com (2008) Text ISBN

978-1-60725-298-6

English translations
Main article: English translations of Homer

This is a partial list of translations into English of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

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 978-0-19-932610-5
Odyssey, Oxford University PressI (2014) ISBN 978-0-19-936031-4
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: The Essential Books, Oxford University Press
(2014) ISBN 978-0-19-939407-4
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
Emily Wilson (b. 1971)
The Odyssey, W. W. Norton (2017) ISBN 978-0-393-08905-9
The Iliad, W. W. Norton (2023) ISBN 9781324001805

General works on Homer

Carlier, Pierre (1999). Homère (in French). Paris: Les éditions Fayard. ISBN
978-2-213-60381-0.
de Romilly, Jacqueline (2005). Homère (5th ed.). Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France. ISBN 978-2-13-054830-0.
Fowler, Robert, ed. (2004). The Cambridge Companion to Homer. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-01246-1.
Latacz, J. (2004). Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery.
Translated by Windle, Kevin; Ireland, Rosh. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN
978-0-19-926308-0. In German, 5th updated and expanded edition, Leipzig, 2005. In
Spanish, 2003, ISBN 84-233-3487-2. In modern Greek, 2005, ISBN 960-16-1557-1.
Monro, David Binning (1911). "Homer" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th
ed.). pp. 626–39.
Powell, Barry B. (2007). Homer (2nd ed.). Malden, Massachusetts; Oxford, UK;
Carlton, Victoria: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-5325-6.
Vidal-Naquet, Pierre (2000). Le monde d'Homère (in French). Paris: Perrin. ISBN
978-2-262-01181-9.
Wace, A. J. B.; F. H. Stubbings (1962). A Companion to Homer. London:
Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-07113-7.

Influential readings and interpretations

Auerbach, Erich (1953). "Chapter 1". Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in

Western Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-11336-4.
(orig. publ. in German, 1946, Bern)
de Jong, Irene J. F. (2004). Narrators and Focalizers: the Presentation of the
Story in the Iliad (2nd ed.). London: Bristol Classical Press. ISBN 978-1-85399-
658-0.
Edwards, Mark W. (1987). Homer, Poet of the Iliad. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-3329-8.
Fenik, Bernard (1974). Studies in the Odyssey. Hermes, Einzelschriften 30.
Wiesbaden: Steiner.
Finley, Moses (2002). The World of Odysseus. New York: The 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 978-0-520-95024-5.
Reece, Steve. The Stranger's Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the
Homeric Hospitality Scene. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.

Commentaries

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. ISBN 0-521-28171-7, 0-521-28172-5, 0-521-28173-3, 0-521-28174-1, 0-521-
31208-6, 0-521-31209-4
J. Latacz (gen. ed.) 2002 Homers Ilias. Gesamtkommentar. Auf der Grundlage
der Ausgabe von Ameis-Hentze-Cauer (1868–1913) (6 volumes published so far, of an
estimated 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 Richmond 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
Translation 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

Janko, Richard (1982). Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns: Diachronic Development in
Epic Diction. Cambridge Classical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 978-0-521-23869-4.
Further reading

Buck, Carl Darling (1928). The Greek Dialects. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Hesiod, the Homeric hymns and Homerica. The Loeb Classical Library. Translated
by Evelyn-White, Hugh Gerard. London; New York: Heinemann; MacMillen. 1914.
Ford, Andrew (1992). Homer : the poetry of the past. Ithaca, New York: Cornell
University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-2700-8.
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.
Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-05128-7.
Silk, Michael (1987). Homer: The Iliad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 978-0-521-83233-5.
Smith, William, ed. (1876). A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and
Mythology. Vol. I, II & III. London: John Murray.
Thurman, Judith (18 September 2023). "Mother Tongue: How Emily Wilson makes
Homer modern". The New Yorker (Long-form article on Emily Wilson's Homer
translations). pp. 46–53.

External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Homer.
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By Homer

Online books
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Works by Homer at Perseus Digital Library

Works by Homer in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
Works by Homer at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Homer at Internet Archive
Works by Homer at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
Homer; Murray, Augustus Taber (1925). The Iliad with an English Translation (in
Ancient Greek and English). Vol. I, Books I–XII. London; New York: William
Heinemann; G. P. Putnam's Sons – via Internet Archive.
The Chicago Homer
Homer at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database Edit this at Wikidata
Heath, Malcolm (4 May 2001). "CLAS3152 Further Greek Literature II: Aristotle's
Poetics: Notes on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey". Department of Classics, University of
Leeds. Archived from the original on 8 September 2008. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
Bassino, Paola (2014). "Homer: A Guide to Selected Sources". Living Poets: a
new approach to ancient history. Durham University. Retrieved 18 November 2014.

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Works related to Homer in antiquity

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Homer's Odyssey (8th century BC)

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Homer's Iliad (8th century BC)

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