Homer
Questions About Homer
The most searched questions about the life and work of Homer, answered with sources.
- Who Was Homer and Why Does His Work Matter?Homer is the name that Greek tradition gives to the poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two oldest poems of European literature. Almost nothing is...
- What Are the Iliad and the Odyssey?The Iliad and the Odyssey are the two epic poems attributed to Homer, composed in Greek around the eighth century BC. Each has twenty-four books, a...
- What Does the Name Homer Mean?Nobody knows for certain. In Greek the name is Hómēros, and as a common noun the word meant "hostage". The ancient biographies of the poet, such as...
- What Did Homer Stand For? What Did He Write About?Homer did not defend a doctrine, as a philosopher does. He hardly speaks in his own name: Aristotle notes in the Poetics that the poet should say as...
- Why Is Homer Considered the Educator of Greece?Because the Greeks themselves held him to be so. In Book X of the Republic, Plato has Socrates speak of the admirers of Homer who said that this poet...
- What Was Homer to Philosophy?Homer was not a philosopher, but Greek philosophy was born arguing with him. Since the poems were the source from which the Greeks learned what the...
- What Is the Relationship Between Homer and Hesiod?Homer and Hesiod are the two great poets of archaic Greece, and the Greeks cited them together. Hesiod lived in Boeotia, around 700 BC, and composed...
- When Did Homer Live? What Was the Homeric Period?There is no certain date. Most scholars place Homer in the eighth century BC, around 750 BC, and the Odyssey perhaps a little after the Iliad....