Reputed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. From Wikidata; Wikipedia.
Lived
9th–8th c. BC
Wrote in
8th c. BC
Kinds of writing
Epic poetry (2), Lyric poetry
Dialect
Ionic/Epic
In the library
3 works, 3 with an English translation; 233,994 words analysed
Life and work
Checked against sources · 30 September 2026
The Iliad opens on a single word, wrath: «μῆνιν ἄειδε θεά», “The wrath sing, goddess”.1 By then the Greeks have been at Troy for nine years.2 The Odyssey follows one of them home, and in Ithaca a seer predicts that he will come back in the twentieth year.3
Who was Homer? Nobody knows. The two best-known ancient biographies, the Life of Homer ascribed to Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, are treated by modern scholars as legend, and most of the ancient lives make him blind.4 Chios and Smyrna were already named as his home by fifth-century writers; later ones added Cyme, Argos, Pylos and Athens.4 One ancient text fits both the blindness and Chios: the singer of the Hymn to Apollo says τυφλὸς ἀνήρ, οἰκεῖ δὲ Χίῳ ἔνι παιπαλοέσσῃ, “a blind man, and he lives on rocky Chios” (our translation).5 Thucydides, quoting that hymn as Homer's, says that in it the poet “also mentions himself”.6
Debated among scholars Most scholars place the poems in the late eighth or early seventh century BC, the Iliad slightly before the Odyssey.4 Proposals range much wider, from the eighth century (Richard Janko) to the middle of the second century BC (Gregory Nagy), with Martin West at 660–650.7 Herodotus supposed that Homer and Hesiod lived “not more than four hundred years earlier than I”, which points to about the ninth century.8
Was it one poet or two? The question is ancient. The chōrizontes, “separators”, held that the Iliad and Odyssey had different authors; only two of their names survive, Xenon and Hellanicus.9 Antiquity also credited Homer with a great deal more: the Homeric Hymns, epigrams, the comic Margites and poems of the Epic Cycle.4 Herodotus already refused him the Cypria, pointing out that they say Paris crossed to Troy with Helen in three days of fair wind, while the Iliad has him wander off course.10
Homer's Greek is a literary dialect: mainly an archaic Ionic, with some Aeolic features and a few from Arcadocypriot.11 You can see it in small words. Where later Greek has ἀγορά, “assembly”, Homer has the Ionic ἀγορή; ἄμμες, “we”, is Aeolic and epic for ἡμεῖς; and the second-declension genitive can end in -οιο, as in πεδίοιο, “of the plain”, beside -ου.1211
Things readers still argue about
How did the poems come down to us? In 1795 Friedrich August Wolf argued that they began as short oral songs, carried in memory for centuries and assembled only in the sixth century BC; the modern “Homeric Question” grew from that.47 From about 1928 Milman Parry and Albert Lord, studying singers in the Balkans, argued that the poems were composed in performance from traditional phrases, the “oral-formulaic theory”, which won very wide acceptance.4
Ancient tradition / legendDid an Athenian tyrant fix the text? Cicero reports that Pisistratus is said to have been the first to arrange Homer's books, which had been in confusion, as we have them now.13 A short dialogue transmitted under Plato's name, the Hipparchus, says that Pisistratus' son Hipparchus first brought Homer's poems to Attica and made the rhapsodes recite them at the Panathenaea in relay, one following on another.14
The road of the text
Follow the text from Homer's own day to the book in your hands. The gaps are the long silences between one mark and the next.
c. 700 BCThe authorThe Iliad and Odyssey are composed, on most accounts between the late 8th and early 7th centuries BC, the Iliad first4,7Debated among scholars
about 420 years laterc. 284 BCPrint and editionsZenodotus, the first head of the Library of Alexandria (appointed 284 BC), becomes the first critical editor of Homer15
about 30 years laterc. 250 BCCopiesThe oldest surviving papyri of Homer are written (3rd century BC on); some have lines that later copies lack17,18
about 100 years laterc. 150 BCPrint and editionsAristarchus, head of the Library from 153 to 145 BC, makes the most historically important critical edition of Homer, with a system of critical signs16
c. 150 BCCopiesFrom about now the papyri settle into a more uniform text17
about 1,100 years laterc. AD 950CopiesThe Venetus A (Marcianus Graecus Z. 454), the main source of the “A scholia”, is copied in the 10th century20
about 540 years later1488Print and editionsThe first printed Homer appears in Florence (1488–89), edited by Demetrius Chalcondyles21
about 300 years later1788Print and editionsVilloison publishes the Venetus A with the B scholia of another Venice manuscript20
7 years later1795ReadersWolf's Prolegomena ad Homerum opens the modern Homeric Question4,7
about 130 years laterc. 1928ReadersMilman Parry begins the work that becomes the oral-formulaic theory4
about 90 years later2017Print and editionsM. L. West's Teubner Odyssey completes his edition of both poems25
The author
Print and editions
Copies
Readers
How the words reached us
Manuscripts & transmission
Passed from hand to hand
Alexandria. Zenodotus, appointed the first director of the Library of Alexandria in 284 BC, was the first critical editor of Homer: he compared manuscripts, and marked or removed lines he doubted.15 Aristarchus, who led the Library from 153 to 145 BC, made the most historically important edition; his critical signs became known as the Aristarchian symbols, and his rejection of doubtful lines made his severity proverbial.16 Either he or Zenodotus probably divided each poem into twenty-four books.16
Papyri. The papyri of Homer date from as early as the third century BC to the seventh century AD, and most were found in Egypt.17 The early ones have “plus verses”, lines missing from the medieval copies, and “minus verses”, lines the medieval copies have that they lack; only from about 150 BC do they begin to settle into a more uniform text.17 For his Odyssey (2017), M. L. West more than doubled the number of papyri known for that poem, mostly from Oxyrhynchus, and they “broadly confirm what we already know”.25
The Venetus A. The main source of the “A scholia”, the notes drawn largely from Aristarchus' work, is a tenth-century Iliad in Venice (Marcianus Graecus Z. 454, now 822), whose margins also carry marks that reflect fairly accurately Aristarchus' own.20 Jean-Baptiste d'Ansse de Villoison rediscovered and published it, with the B scholia of another Venice manuscript, in 1788.20
Print. The first printed Homer came out in Florence in 1488–89, edited by Demetrius Chalcondyles.21
Textual variants
Where the copies disagree
Wild papyri. The earliest papyri have extra lines and sometimes different wording. Earlier scholars dismissed them as “eccentric” or “wild”; Graeme Bird (2010) argues instead that they show authentic variation, of the kind oral performance produces.18 The standard study of the Ptolemaic papyri is Stephanie West's (1967).19
A lost letter. Homer's language once had a w-sound, the digamma (ϝ), which Ionic had probably lost before the poems were written down in the seventh century BC.22 No standard edition prints it, but the metre can show where it was. In the first line of the quarrel, Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, the τε is not cut short before ἄναξ,24 and ἄναξ began with a w: Mycenaean Greek wrote the word wa-na-ka.23 Some editions put the letter back, but they have largely fallen out of favour.22
Books to read it in
D. B. Monro and T. W. Allen, Homeri Opera, vols 1–2, Iliad (Oxford Classical Texts, 3rd ed. 1920).27 The Greek Iliad in the Scroll is Perseus's copy of this text.31
A. T. Murray, Odyssey (Loeb Classical Library, 1919)32 and Iliad (Loeb, 1924–25).33 The Greek Odyssey in the Scroll, and one English translation of each poem, are Murray's.31
Samuel Butler's prose translations of both poems (the Odyssey revised by Timothy Power and Gregory Nagy).31 The other English translation in the Scroll.
M. L. West, Homeri Ilias, 2 vols (Teubner, 1998–2000)26 and Homerus. Odyssea (De Gruyter, 2017).25 The fullest modern critical editions.
G. S. Kirk (general editor), The Iliad: A Commentary, 6 vols (Cambridge University Press, 1985–93).28
A. Heubeck, S. West, J. B. Hainsworth and others, A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey, 3 vols (Oxford, 1988–92).2930