
tradition Homer (ˈhoʊmər; Ancient Greek
: , Hómēros), is the author of the Iliad
and the Odyssey
, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic
poet
. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon
of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature
.
When he lived is controversial. Herodotus
estimates that Homer lived 400 years before Herodotus' own time, which would place him at around 850 BC
; while other ancient sources claim that he lived much nearer to the supposed time of the Trojan War
, in the early 12th century BC.
For modern scholars "the date of Homer" refers not to an individual, but to the period when the epics were created.
The will of Zeus was accomplished.
Then looking at him darkly resourceful Odysseus spoke to him: "What is this word that broke through the fence of your teeth, Atreides?"
As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity. The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning. So one generation of men will grow while another dies.
So they spoke, and both springing down from behind their horses gripped each other's hands and exchanged the promise of friendship; but Zeus the son of Kronos stole away the wits of Glaukos who exchanged with Diomedes the son of Tydeus armour of gold for bronze, for nine oxen's worth the worth of a hundred.
Victory passes back and forth between men.
Man, supposing you and I, escaping this battle, would be able to live on forever, ageless, immortal, so neither would I myself go on fighting in the foremost, nor would I urge you into the fighting where men win glory. But now, seeing that the spirits of death stand close about us in their thousands, no man can turn aside or escape them, let us go on and win glory for ourselves, or yield it to others.
Among all creatures that breathe on earth and crawl on it there is not anywhere a thing more dismal than man is.
I have gone through what no other mortal on earth has gone through; I put my lips to the hands of the man who has killed my children.
And you, old sir, we are told you prospered once.
These things surely lie on the knees of the gods.
tradition Homer (ˈhoʊmər; Ancient Greek
: , Hómēros), is the author of the Iliad
and the Odyssey
, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic
poet
. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon
of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature
.
When he lived is controversial. Herodotus
estimates that Homer lived 400 years before Herodotus' own time, which would place him at around 850 BC
; while other ancient sources claim that he lived much nearer to the supposed time of the Trojan War
, in the early 12th century BC.
For modern scholars "the date of Homer" refers not to an individual, but to the period when the epics were created. The consensus is that "the Iliad and the Odyssey date from around the 8th century BC, the Iliad being composed before the Odyssey, perhaps by some decades," i.e. earlier than Hesiod
, the Iliad being the oldest work of Western literature
. Over the past few decades, some scholars have argued for a 7th century BC date. Some of those who argue that the Homeric poems developed gradually over a long period of time give an even later date for the composition of the poems; according to Gregory Nagy
for example, they only became fixed texts in the 6th century BC.
The question of the historicity of Homer the individual is known as the "Homeric question
"; there is no reliable biographical information handed down from classical antiquity
. The poems are generally seen as the culmination of many generations of oral story-telling, in a tradition with a well-developed formulaic system of poetic composition. Some scholars, such as Martin West
, claim that "Homer" is "not the name of a historical poet, but a fictitious or constructed name."
The formative influence played by the Homeric epics in shaping Greek culture was widely recognized, and Homer was described as the teacher of Greece. Homer's works, which are about fifty percent speeches, provided models in persuasive speaking and writing that were emulated throughout the ancient and medieval Greek worlds. Fragments of Homer account for about half of all ancient Greek papyrus finds.
Life and legends
_-_homer_and_his_guide_(1874).jpg)
, in his True History
, describes him as a Babylonia
n called Tigranes, who assumed the name Homer when taken "hostage" (homeros) by the Greeks. When the Emperor Hadrian
asked the Oracle
at Delphi
about Homer, the Pythia
proclaimed that he was Ithaca
n, the son of Epikaste and Telemachus
, from the Odyssey
. These stories were incorporated into the various Lives of Homer compiled from the Alexandrian period onwards. Homer is most frequently said to be born in the Ionia
n region of Asia Minor
, at Smyrna
, or on the island of Chios
, dying on the Cycladic
island of Ios. A connection with Smyrna seems to be alluded to in a legend that his original name was Melesigenes ("born of Meles
", a river which flowed by that city), with his mother the nymph Kretheis. Internal evidence from the poems gives evidence of familiarity with the topography and place-names of this area of Asia Minor
, for example, Homer refers to meadow birds at the mouth of the Caystros
(Iliad
2.459ff.), a storm in the Icarian
sea (Iliad 2.144ff.), and mentions that women in Maeonia and Caria
stain ivory with scarlet (Iliad 4.142).
The association with Chios dates back to at least Semonides of Amorgos
, who cited a famous line in the Iliad (6.146) as by "the man of Chios". An eponym
ous bard
ic guild
, known as the Homeridae
(sons of Homer), or Homeristae ('Homerizers') appears to have existed there, tracing descent from an ancestor of that name, or upholding their function as rhapsode
s or "lay-stitchers" specialising in the recitation of Homeric poetry. Wilhelm Dörpfeld
suggests that Homer had visited many of the places and regions which he describes in his epics, such as Mycenae
, Troy
, the palace of Odysseus at Ithaca
and more. According to Diodorus Siculus
, Homer had even visited Egypt
.
The poet's name is homophonous with ὅμηρος (hómēros), "hostage" (or "surety"), which is interpreted as meaning "he who accompanies; he who is forced to follow", or, in some dialects, "blind". This led to many tales that he was a hostage or a blind man. Traditions which assert that he was blind
may have arisen from the meaning of the word in both Ionic
, where the verbal form ὁμηρεύω (homēreúō) has the specialized meaning of "guide the blind", and the Aeolian
dialect of Cyme
, where ὅμηρος (hómēros) is synonymous with the standard Greek τυφλός (tuphlós), meaning 'blind'. The characterization of Homer as a blind bard
goes back to some verses in the Delian
Hymn to Apollo
, the third of the Homeric Hymns
, verses later cited to support this notion by Thucydides
. The Cume
an historian Ephorus
held the same view, and the idea gained support in antiquity on the strength of a false etymology
which derived his name from ho mḕ horṓn (ὁ μὴ ὁρῶν: "he who does not see"). Critics have long taken as self-referential a passage in the Odyssey describing a blind bard, Demodocus, in the court of the Phaeacian king, who recounts stories of Troy to the shipwrecked Odysseus
.
Many scholars take the name of the poet to be indicative of a generic function. Gregory Nagy takes it to mean "he who fits (the Song) together". ὁμηρέω (homēréō), another related verb, besides signifying "meet", can mean "(sing) in accord/tune". Some argue that "Homer" may have meant "he who puts the voice in tune" with dancing. Marcello Durante links "Homeros" to an epithet of Zeus as "god of the assemblies" and argues that behind the name lies the echo of an archaic word for "reunion", similar to the later Panegyris
, denoting a formal assembly of competing minstrels.
Some Ancient Lives depict Homer as a wandering minstrel, like Thamyris
or Hesiod
, who walked as far as Chalkis to sing at the funeral games of Amphidamas
. We are given the image of a "blind, begging singer who hangs around with little people: shoemakers, fisherman, potters, sailors, elderly men in the gathering places of harbour towns". The poems, on the other hand, give us evidence of singers at the courts of the nobility. There is a strong aristocratic bias in the poems demonstrated by the lack of any major protagonists of non-aristocratic stock, and by episodes such as the beating down of the commoner Thersites
by the king Odysseus
for daring to criticize his superiors. In spite of this scholars are divided as to which category, if any, the court singer or the wandering minstrel, the historic "Homer" belonged.
Works attributed to Homer
The Greeks of the sixth and early fifth centuries BC understood by "Homer", generally, "the whole body of heroic traditionas embodied in hexameter
verse". Thus, in addition to the Iliad
and the Odyssey
, there are "exceptional" epics which organize their respective themes on a "massive scale". Many other works were credited to Homer in antiquity, including the entire Epic Cycle. The genre included further poems on the Trojan War
, such as the Little Iliad
, the Nostoi
, the Cypria, and the Epigoni
, as well as the Theban
poems about Oedipus
and his sons. Other works, such as the corpus of Homeric Hymns
, the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia
("The Frog-Mouse War"), and the Margites
were also attributed to him, but this is now believed to be unlikely. Two other poems, the Capture of Oechalia
and the Phocais
were also assigned Homeric authorship, but the question of the identities of the authors of these various texts is even more problematic than that of the authorship of the two major epics.
Problems of authorship
The idea that Homer was responsible for just the two outstanding epics, the Iliadand the Odyssey
, did not win consensus until 350 BC. While many find it unlikely that both epics were composed by the same person, others argue that the stylistic similarities are too consistent to support the theory of multiple authorship. One view which attempts to bridge the differences holds that the Iliad was composed by "Homer" in his maturity, while the Odyssey was a work of his old age. The Batrachomyomachia
, Homeric Hymns
and cyclic epics are generally agreed to be later than the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Most scholars agree that the Iliad and Odyssey underwent a process of standardisation and refinement out of older material beginning in the 8th century BC. An important role in this standardisation appears to have been played by the Athenian
tyrant
Hipparchus
, who reformed the recitation of Homeric poetry at the Panathenaic festival. Many classicists hold that this reform must have involved the production of a canonical
written text.
Other scholars still support the idea that Homer was a real person. Since nothing is known about the life of this Homer, the common joke—also recycled with regard to Shakespeare—has it that the poems "were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name." Samuel Butler argues, based on literary observations, that a young Sicilian woman wrote the Odyssey (but not the Iliad), an idea further pursued by Robert Graves
in his novel Homer's Daughter and Andrew Dalby
in Rediscovering Homer
.
Independent of the question of single authorship is the near-universal agreement, after the work of Milman Parry
, that the Homeric poems are dependent on an oral tradition
, a generations-old technique that was the collective inheritance of many singer-poets (aoidoi
). An analysis of the structure and vocabulary of the Iliad and Odyssey shows that the poems contain many formulaic phrases typical of extempore epic traditions; even entire verses are at times repeated. Parry and his student Albert Lord
pointed out that such elaborate oral tradition, foreign to today's literate cultures, is typical of epic poetry
in a predominantly oral cultural milieu, the key words being "oral" and "traditional". Parry started with "traditional": the repetitive chunks of language, he said, were inherited by the singer-poet from his predecessors, and were useful to him in composition. Parry called these repetitive chunks "formulas".
Exactly when these poems would have taken on a fixed written form is subject to debate. The traditional solution is the "transcription hypothesis", wherein a non-literate "Homer" dictates his poem to a literate scribe between the 8th and 6th centuries BC. The Greek alphabet
was introduced in the early 8th century BC, so it is possible that Homer himself was of the first generation of authors who were also literate. The classicist Barry B. Powell
suggests that the Greek alphabet was invented ca. 800 BC by one man, probably Homer, in order to write down oral epic poetry. More radical Homerists like Gregory Nagy contend that a canonical text of the Homeric poems as "scripture" did not exist until the Hellenistic period (3rd to 1st century BC).
Homeric studies
The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity. The aims and achievements of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia. In the last few centuries, they have revolved around the process by which the Homeric poems came into existence and were transmitted over time to us, first orally and later in writing.Some of the main trends in modern Homeric scholarship have been, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Analysis and Unitarianism (see Homeric Question
), schools of thought which emphasized on the one hand the inconsistencies in, and on the other the artistic unity of, Homer; and in the 20th century and later Oral Theory, the study of the mechanisms and effects of oral transmission, and Neoanalysis, the study of the relationship between Homer and other early epic material.
Homeric dialect
The language used by Homer is an archaic version of Ionic Greek, with admixtures from certain other dialects, such as Aeolic Greek
. It later served as the basis of Epic Greek, the language of epic poetry
, typically in dactylic hexameter
.
Homeric style
Aristotleremarks in his Poetics that Homer was unique among the poets of his time, focusing on a single unified theme or action in the epic cycle.
The cardinal qualities of the style of Homer are well articulated by Matthew Arnold
:
[T]he translator of Homer should above all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities of his author:—that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct, both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words; that he is eminently plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and finally, that he is eminently noble.

verse. It is characteristic of early literature that the evolution of the thought, or the grammatical form of the sentence, is guided by the structure of the verse; and the correspondence which consequently obtains between the rhythm and the syntax—the thought being given out in lengths, as it were, and these again divided by tolerably uniform pauses—produces a swift flowing movement such as is rarely found when periods are constructed without direct reference to the metre. That Homer possesses this rapidity without falling into the corresponding faults, that is, without becoming either fluctuant or monotonous, is perhaps the best proof of his unequalled poetic skill. The plainness and directness of both thought and expression which characterise him were doubtless qualities of his age, but the author of the Iliad
(similar to Voltaire
, to whom Arnold happily compares him) must have possessed this gift in a surpassing degree. The Odyssey
is in this respect perceptibly below the level of the Iliad.
Rapidity or ease of movement, plainness of expression, and plainness of thought are not distinguishing qualities of the great epic poets Virgil
, Dante
, and Milton
. On the contrary, they belong rather to the humbler epico-lyrical school for which Homer has been so often claimed. The proof that Homer does not belong to that school—and that his poetry is not in any true sense ballad poetry—is furnished by the higher artistic structure of his poems and, as regards style, by the fourth of the qualities distinguished by Arnold: the quality of nobleness. It is his noble and powerful style, sustained through every change of idea and subject, that finally separates Homer from all forms of ballad poetry and popular epic
.
Like the French epics, such as the Chanson de Roland, Homeric poetry is indigenous and, by the ease of movement and its resultant simplicity, distinguishable from the works of Dante, Milton and Virgil. It is also distinguished from the works of these artists by the comparative absence of underlying motives or sentiment. In Virgil's poetry, a sense of the greatness of Rome
and Italy
is the leading motive of a passionate rhetoric, partly veiled by the considered delicacy of his language. Dante and Milton are still more faithful exponents of the religion and politics of their time. Even the French epics
display sentiments of fear and hatred of the Saracens; but, in Homer's works, the interest is purely dramatic. There is no strong antipathy of race
or religion
; the war turns on no political events; the capture of Troy
lies outside the range of the Iliad; and even the protagonists are not comparable to the chief national heroes of Greece. So far as can be seen, the chief interest in Homer's works is that of human feeling and emotion, and of drama
; indeed, his works are often referred to as "dramas".
History and the Iliad

at Hisarlik
in the late 19th century provided initial evidence to scholars that there was an historical basis for the Trojan War
. Research into oral epics in Serbo-Croatian
and Turkic languages
, pioneered by the aforementioned Parry and Lord, began convincing scholars that long poems could be preserved with consistency by oral cultures until they are written down. The decipherment
of Linear B
in the 1950s by Michael Ventris
(and others) convinced many of a linguistic continuity between 13th century BC Mycenae
an writings and the poems attributed to Homer.
It is probable, therefore, that the story of the Trojan War
as reflected in the Homeric poems derives from a tradition of epic poetry founded on a war which actually took place. It is crucial, however, not to underestimate the creative and transforming power of subsequent tradition: for instance, Achilles
, the most important character of the Iliad
, is strongly associated with southern Thessaly
, but his legendary figure is interwoven into a tale of war whose kings were from the Peloponnese
. Tribal wanderings were frequent, and far-flung, ranging over much of Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean. The epic weaves brilliantly the (scattered remains) of these distinct tribal narratives, exchanged among clan bards, into a monumental tale in which Greeks join collectively to do battle on the distant plains of Troy.
Hero cult

by Ptolemy IV Philopator
in the late 3rd century BC. This shrine is described in Aelian
's 3rd century AD work Varia Historia. He tells how Ptolemy "placed in a circle around the statue [of Homer] all the cities who laid claim to Homer" and mentions a painting of the poet by the artist Galaton
, which apparently depicted Homer in the aspect of Oceanus
as the source of all poetry.
A marble relief, found in Italy but thought to have been sculpted in Egypt
, depicts the apotheosis
of Homer. It shows Ptolemy and his wife or sister Arsinoe III standing beside a seated poet, flanked by figures from the Odyssey and Iliad, with the nine Muses standing above them and a procession of worshippers approaching an altar, believed to represent the Alexandrine Homereion. Apollo
, the god of music and poetry, also appears, along with a female figure tentatively identified as Mnemosyne
, the mother of the Muses. Zeus
, the king of the gods
, presides over the proceedings. The relief demonstrates vividly that the Greeks considered Homer not merely a great poet but the divinely inspired reservoir of all literature.
Homereia also stood at Chios
, Ephesus
, and Smyrna
, which were among the city-states that claimed to be his birthplace. Strabo
(14.1.37) records an Homeric temple in Smyrna with an ancient xoanon
or cult statue of the poet. He also mentions sacrifices carried out to Homer by the inhabitants of Argos
, presumably at another Homereion.
Transmission and publication
Though evincing many features characteristic of oral poetry, the Iliad and Odyssey were at some point committed to writing. The Greek script, adapted from a Phoeniciansyllabary
around 800 BC, made possible the notation of the complex rhythms and vowel clusters that make up hexameter verse. Homer's poems appear to have been recorded shortly after the alphabet's invention: an inscription from Ischia
in the Bay of Naples
, ca. 740 BC, appears to refer to a text of the Iliad; likewise, illustrations seemingly inspired by the Polyphemus
episode in the Odyssey are found on Samos
, Mykonos
and in Italy, dating from the first quarter of the seventh century BC. We have little information about the early condition of the Homeric poems, but in the second century BC, Alexandrian editors stabilized this text from which all modern texts descend.
In late antiquity
, knowledge of Greek declined in Latin-speaking western Europe and, along with it, knowledge of Homer's poems. It was not until the fifteenth century AD that Homer's work began to be read once more in Italy. By contrast it was continually read and taught in the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire where the majority of the classics also survived. The first printed edition appeared in 1488 (edited by Demetrios Chalkokondyles and published by Bernardus Nerlius, Nerius Nerlius, and Demetrius Damilas in Florence, Italy).
Modern scholars
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- Walter LeafWalter LeafWalter Leaf was an English banker and scholar.Walter Leaf was born at on 26 November 1852 and educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1877 he entered the family firm, becoming in 1888 chairman of Leaf & Company Ltd. Later he became chairman of the Westminster Bank...
- Albert LordAlbert LordAlbert Bates Lord was a professor of Slavic and comparative literature at Harvard University who, after the death of Milman Parry, carried on that scholar's research into epic literature.-Personal life:...
- David Binning MonroDavid Binning MonroDavid Binning Monro was a Scottish Homeric scholar.-Life:David Monro was born in Edinburgh, the grandson of Alexander Monro tertius, professor of anatomy at the University of Edinburgh, whose own father, Alexander Monro secondus , and grandfather, Alexander Monro primus , had both filled the same...
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- Gregory NagyGregory NagyGregory Nagy , born in Budapest Hungary in 1942, is an American professor of Classics at Harvard University, specializing in Homer and archaic Greek poetry. Nagy is known for extending Milman Parry and Albert Lord's theories about the oral composition-in-performance of the Iliad and Odyssey...
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- Barry B. PowellBarry B. PowellBarry B. Powell is the Halls-Bascom Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, author of the widely used textbook Classical Myth and many other books. He is a specialist in Homer and in the history of writing...
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Editions
(texts in Homeric Greek)- Demetrius ChalcondylesDemetrius ChalcondylesDemetrios Chalkokondyles, latinized as Demetrius Chalcocondyles and found variously as Demetricocondyles, Chalcocondylas or Chalcondyles , was a Greek humanist, scholar and Professor who taught the Greek language in Italy for over forty years; at Padua, Perugia, Milan and Florence...
editio princeps, Florence, 1488 - the Aldine editions (1504 and 1517)
- Th. Ridel, Strasbourg, ca. 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)
- W. Walter Merry and James Riddell (Odyssey i.-xii., 2nd ed., Oxford, 1886)
- Monro (Odyssey xiii.-xxiv. with appendices, Oxford, 1901)
- Monro and Allen (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, ISBN 0-19-814529-2, ISBN 0-19-814531-4, ISBN 0-19-814532-2, ISBN 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
- M.L. West 1998-2000, Homeri Ilias (2 volumes), Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-71431-9, ISBN 3-598-71435-1
- P. von der Mühll 1993, Homeri Odyssea, Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-71432-7
- Ilias in Wikisource
Interlinear translations
- The Iliad of Homer a Parsed Interlinear, Handheldclassics.com (2008) Text ISBN 978-1607252986
English translations
This is a partial list of translations into English of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.- Augustus Taber Murray (1866–1940)
- Homer: Iliad, 2 vols., revised by William F. Wyatt, Loeb Classical LibraryLoeb Classical LibraryThe Loeb Classical Library is a series of books, today published by Harvard University Press, which presents important works of ancient Greek and Latin Literature in a way designed to make the text accessible to the broadest possible audience, by presenting the original Greek or Latin text on each...
, Harvard University Press (1999). - Homer: Odyssey, 2 vols., revised by George E. Dimock, Loeb Classical LibraryLoeb Classical LibraryThe Loeb Classical Library is a series of books, today published by Harvard University Press, which presents important works of ancient Greek and Latin Literature in a way designed to make the text accessible to the broadest possible audience, by presenting the original Greek or Latin text on each...
, Harvard University Press (1995).
- Homer: Iliad, 2 vols., revised by William F. Wyatt, Loeb Classical Library
- Robert FitzgeraldRobert FitzgeraldRobert Stuart Fitzgerald was a poet, critic and translator whose renderings of the Greek classics "became standard works for a generation of scholars and students." He was best known as a translator of ancient Greek and Latin...
(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 FaglesRobert FaglesRobert Fagles was an American professor, poet, and academic, best known for his many translations of ancient Greek classics, especially his acclaimed translations of the epic poems of Homer...
(1933–2008)- The Iliad, Penguin Classics (1998) ISBN 0-14-027536-3
- The Odyssey, Penguin Classics (1999) ISBN 0-14-026886-3
- Stanley LombardoStanley LombardoStanley F. Lombardo is an American professor of Classics at the University of Kansas. He is best known for his translations of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid...
(b. 1943)- Iliad, Hackett Publishing CompanyHackett Publishing CompanyHackett Publishing Company, Inc. is an academic publishing house based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Since beginning operations in 1972, Hackett has concentrated mainly on humanities, especially classical and philosophical texts. Many Hackett titles are used as textbooks, making the company very...
(1997) ISBN 0-87220-352-2 - Odyssey, Hackett Publishing CompanyHackett Publishing CompanyHackett Publishing Company, Inc. is an academic publishing house based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Since beginning operations in 1972, Hackett has concentrated mainly on humanities, especially classical and philosophical texts. Many Hackett titles are used as textbooks, making the company very...
(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
- Iliad, Hackett Publishing Company
- Samuel Butler (novelist)Samuel Butler (novelist)Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the Utopian satire Erewhon and a semi-autobiographical novel published posthumously, The Way of All Flesh...
(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
- Herbert Jordan (b. 1938)
- "Iliad", University of Oklahoma Press (2008) ISBN 9780806139746 (soft cover); ISBN 9780806139425 (cloth bound)
General works on Homer
- Pierre Carlier, Homère, Fayard 1999. ISBN 2-213-60381-2
- Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Le monde d'Homère, Perrin 2000. ISBN 2-262-01181-8
- Jacqueline de Romilly, Homère, Presses Universitaire de France, 5th ed. 2005. ISBN 2-13-054830-X
- J. Latacz 2004, Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery, Oxford, ISBN 0-19-926308-6; 5th updated and expanded edition, Leipzig 2005 (in Spanish 2003 ISBN 84-233-3487-2, modern Greek 2005 ISBN 960-16-1557-1)
- Robert Fowler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Homer, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004. ISBN 0-521-01246-5
- I. Morris and B. B. Powell 1997, A New Companion to Homer, Leiden. ISBN 90-04-09989-1
- B. B. Powell 2007, "Homer," 2nd edition. Oxford. ISBN 978-1-4051-5325-5
Influential readings and interpretations
- E. Auerbach 1953, Mimesis, Princeton (orig. publ. in German, 1946, Bern), chapter 1. ISBN 0-691-11336-X
- M.W. Edwards 1987, Homer, Poet of the Iliad, Baltimore. ISBN 0-8018-3329-9
- B. Fenik 1974, Studies in the Odyssey, Wiesbaden ('Hermes' Einzelschriften 30).
- M.I. Finley, The World of Odysseus 1954, rev. ed. 1978.
- I.J.F. de Jong 1987, Narrators and Focalizers, Amsterdam/Bristol. ISBN 1-85399-658-0
- G. Nagy 1980, "The Best of the Achaeans", Baltimore. ISBN 978-0801860157
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, ISBN 0-521-28172-5, ISBN 0-521-28173-3, ISBN 0-521-28174-1, ISBN 0-521-31208-6, ISBN 0-521-31209-4
- J. LataczJoachim LataczJoachim Latacz is a German classical philologist.Latacz studied Classical Philology, Indo-Germanic languages, Ancient History and Archaeology from 1954-1956 at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg...
(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
Trends in Homeric scholarship
"Classical" analysis- A. Heubeck 1974, Die homerische Frage, Darmstadt. ISBN 3-534-03864-9
- R. Merkelbach 1969, Untersuchungen zur Odyssee (2nd edition), Munich. ISBN 3-406-03242-7
- D. Page 1955, The Homeric Odyssey, Oxford.
- U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff 1916, Die Ilias und Homer, Berlin.
- F.A. Wolf 1795, Prolegomena ad Homerum, Halle. Published in English translation 1988, Princeton. ISBN 0-691-10247-3
Neoanalysis
- M.E. Clark 1986, "Neoanalysis: a bibliographical review," Classical World 79.6: 379-94.
- J. Griffin 1977, "The epic cycle and the uniqueness of Homer," Journal of Hellenic Studies 97: 39-53.
- J.T. Kakridis 1949, Homeric Researches, London. ISBN 0-8240-7757-1
- W. Kullmann 1960, Die Quellen der Ilias (Troischer Sagenkreis), Wiesbaden. ISBN 3-515-00235-9
Homer and oral tradition
- E. Bakker 1997, Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse, Ithaca NY. ISBN 0-8014-3295-2
- J.M. Foley 1999, Homer's Traditional Art, University Park PA. ISBN 0-271-01870-4
- G.S. Kirk 1976, Homer and the Oral Tradition, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-21309-6
- A.B. Lord 1960, The Singer of Tales, Cambridge MA. ISBN 0-674-00283-0
- M. Parry 1971, The Making of Homeric Verse, Oxford. ISBN 0-19-520560-X
- B. B. Powell, 1991, Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet, ISBN 0-521-58907-X
Dating the Homeric poems
- R. Janko 1982, Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-23869-2
External links
- Iliad by Homer
- Works by Homer at Project GutenbergProject GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
. - Iliad bilingual edition bks 1-12 at archive.org
- Collection of Homer-related links
- Greek lessons based on Homer
- Clyde Pharr, Homer and the study of Greek
- Homer
- SORGLL: Homer, Iliad, Bk I, 1-52; read by Stephen Daitz
- Racing Odysseus: A College President Becomes a Freshman Again A former college president attended St. John's College and wrote a memoir about his experience reading Homer, rowing Crew, and examining the importance of a liberal arts education in today’s society.
- Translation issues: Iliad translator Herbert Jordan (U. of Oklahoma Press 2008) describes translation issues including: how literal should it be; whether to call the besiegers Achaeans, Argives, Danaans, or Greeks; how—and whether—to translate "winged words"; what the wall by the ships looked like; whether the besiegers slept in tents, huts, camps—or nothing.