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The MouseionHomer

Homer

3 works in the library, 3 with an English translation.

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
Analysed
233,994 words

The 3 works

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.

Before you read. Little numbers like 1 are footnotes. Tap one and it jumps to the source at the bottom of the page, so you can check us. Debated among scholars The evidence allows more than one reading, and specialists disagree. Ancient tradition / legend This is what ancient writers told; it may not be what happened. No label? Then the sources simply state it as fact.

  • The author
  • Copies
  • Print and editions
  • Readers
  1. c. 700 BCThe authorThe Iliad and Odyssey are composed, on most accounts between the late 8th and early 7th centuries BC, the Iliad first4,7 Debated among scholars
  2. about 420 years laterc. 284 BCCopiesZenodotus, the first head of the Library of Alexandria (appointed 284 BC), becomes the first critical editor of Homer15
  3. 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
  4. about 100 years laterc. 150 BCCopiesAristarchus, head of the Library from 153 to 145 BC, makes the most historically important critical edition of Homer, with a system of critical signs16
  5. c. 150 BCCopiesFrom about now the papyri settle into a more uniform text17
  6. 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
  7. about 540 years later1488Print and editionsThe first printed Homer appears in Florence (1488–89), edited by Demetrius Chalcondyles21
  8. about 300 years later1788Print and editionsVilloison publishes the Venetus A with the B scholia of another Venice manuscript20
  9. 7 years later1795ReadersWolf's Prolegomena ad Homerum opens the modern Homeric Question4,7
  10. about 130 years laterc. 1928ReadersMilman Parry begins the work that becomes the oral-formulaic theory4
  11. about 90 years later2017Print and editionsM. L. West's Teubner Odyssey completes his edition of both poems25

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), with Martin West putting the Iliad no earlier than 660–650; Gregory Nagy holds that the poems went on changing in performance and did not settle into a fixed text until as late as the middle of the second century BC.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 1928 Milman Parry showed how much of Homer's style is built from traditional phrases; in the 1930s he and Albert Lord recorded singers in the Balkans, and they argued that the poems were composed in performance from traditional phrases, the “oral-formulaic theory”, which won very wide acceptance.4

Ancient tradition / legend Did 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

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 reader 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 reader, 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 reader.
  • 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

Where this comes from

Sources (33)
  1. Iliad 1.1, in the reader
  2. Iliad 2.134, in the reader
  3. Odyssey 2.175, in the reader
  4. Wikipedia, Homer (the lives, the cities, the date, Wolf, Parry)
  5. Homeric Hymn 3, to Apollo, line 172, in the reader
  6. Thucydides 3.104.4–6, in the reader
  7. Wikipedia, Homeric Question (the range of dates, Wolf)
  8. Herodotus 2.53, in the reader
  9. Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, “Chorizontes” (Perseus Digital Library)
  10. Herodotus 2.117, in the reader
  11. Wikipedia, Homeric Greek (the dialect mix, the genitive in -οιο)
  12. Liddell–Scott–Jones, Greek–English Lexicon: the entries ἀγορά and ἄμμες (Perseus Digital Library)
  13. Cicero, On the Orator 3.137 (Latin text, The Latin Library)
  14. Plato (attributed), Hipparchus 228b, in the reader
  15. Wikipedia, Zenodotus (the first director of the Library, the first critical editor of Homer)
  16. Wikipedia, Aristarchus of Samothrace (his edition, signs and term as head of the Library)
  17. Casey Dué, “Homer & the Papyri: Introduction”, Center for Hellenic Studies (Harvard)
  18. Graeme D. Bird, Multitextuality in the Homeric Iliad: The Witness of the Ptolemaic Papyri, Hellenic Studies 43 (Center for Hellenic Studies, 2010)
  19. Stephanie West, The Ptolemaic Papyri of Homer (Cologne, 1967)
  20. Wikipedia, Venetus A (date, contents, scholia, Villoison 1788)
  21. Wikipedia, List of editiones principes in Greek (Homer, Florence, 1488–89, Chalcondyles)
  22. Wikipedia, Digamma (its loss in Ionic, its trace in the metre, editions that restored it)
  23. Wikipedia, Wanax (Homeric ἄναξ and Linear B wa-na-ka)
  24. Iliad 1.7, in the reader
  25. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2019.01.05 on M. L. West, Homerus. Odyssea (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2017)
  26. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2000.09.12 on M. L. West, Homeri Ilias, 2 vols (Teubner, 1998–2000)
  27. Oxford University Press, Homer, Opera (Oxford Classical Texts, Monro and Allen, the Iliad)
  28. Cambridge University Press, The Iliad: A Commentary (general editor G. S. Kirk, 6 vols)
  29. Oxford University Press, A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey (Heubeck, West, Hainsworth and others)
  30. The Classical Review on Heubeck, West and Hainsworth, vol. 1 (1988) and Heubeck and Hoekstra, vol. 2 (1989)
  31. Perseus's copies of the Iliad and Odyssey shown in the reader; each file's header names its edition (Monro and Allen for the Greek Iliad, Murray for the Greek Odyssey, Murray and Butler for the English)
  32. Loeb Classical Library, Homer, Odyssey, vol. I (A. T. Murray, 1919)
  33. Loeb Classical Library, Homer, Iliad, vol. I (A. T. Murray, 1924)

We checked every statement above against these sources on 30 September 2026. Where they disagree, we say so. What we could not confirm, we left out.

In The Painted Stoa

Entries that quote or point to Homer's Greek.

Linear BFor half a century after they were dug up, thousands of clay tablets from the Bronze Age palaces of Crete and mainland Greece kept their secret.Asclepius and the healing sleepA sick Greek who could afford the journey might go to a sanctuary of Asclepius, the god of healing, wash, make an offering, and lie down for the night in a special hall, hoping the god would come in a dream and cure him.Homer's similesThe Iliad is a poem about a few weeks of killing outside Troy.Mycenae, rich in goldHomer called Mycenae "rich in gold".
All 9 entries
Knossos and the labyrinthHomer knew Knossos as "a great city" where Minos was king, and later Greeks told of the labyrinth that Daedalus built there for the Minotaur.Troy at HisarlikFor Homer, Troy was "sacred Ilios", the city whose fall everyone in the Iliad knows is coming.Drugs and poisonsThe Greeks had one word for a medicine, a poison and a magic spell: pharmakon.Love, sex and marriageA Greek marriage was a deal between two households, made so that a man would have legitimate children to inherit his house.SlaveryGreek cities had slaves, and classical Athens, the city that invented democracy, had a great many.

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μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆοςοὐλομένην, ἣ μυρίʼ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγεʼ ἔθηκε

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