Homer

Martin Mueller (Northwestern University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.1.1: Greek Writing and Culture: Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic and Imperial, -800--100.
Vol. editors: Jonathan Burgess (University of Toronto), Anca Dan (École Practique de Hautes Études PSL), Martine Diepenbroek (University of Johannesburg), Giacomo Fedeli (University of Exeter), Victoria Fendel (University of Oxford), Emily Kneebone (University of Nottingham), Vaios Liapis (Open University of Cyprus), Elodie Paillard (University of Sydney), Mali Skotheim (Ashoka University), Laura Swift (The Open University), Guendalina Daniela Maria Taietti (University of Liverpool)

Dates

Born c. -750
Died c. -700
Activity c. -750-c. -700

Places

Born in Ancient Greece
Active in Ancient Greece

Activities

Primary

Poet

Resources

Homer's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Homer is the name for the putative author(s) of the poems known since antiquity as the Iliad and Odyssey. The 16,000 lines of the former and 12,000 lines of the latter make up the bulk of Early Greek epic, which also includes about 2,000 lines of Hesiod as well as another 2,500 lines of Homeric Hymns (not by Homer), and a narrative poem called

The Shield of Herakles

The texts

The texts

The Iliad and Odyssey have been transmitted with exceptional fidelity since the second century BCE. The many papyrus fragments since that period show that texts had pretty much the same lines in the same order, and the manuscript tradition of Homer shows less internal variance than the texts of Shakespeare. Before the second century BCE textual variance was much greater. We know this from papyrus fragments

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7164 words

Citation: Mueller, Martin. "Homer". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 November 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2190, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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