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Homer is the presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two hugely influential epic poems of ancient Greece. If Homer did in fact compose the works, he is one of the greatest literary artists in the world, and, through these poems, he affected Western standards and ideas.
Why was Homer’s Odyssey written?
Scholars date the writing of the Odyssey to about 725–675 bce. The poem was intended for oral performance. Homer’s role in the writing of the poem and whether he was literate have been a source for rich scholarly debate, commonly referred to as the “Homeric Question.”
What is Homer’s style of writing?
He paved the way for a style of literature that used the hexameter verse, was expressive and historically descriptive. Homer’s poems were dramatic and fueled by true emotion; not politics, religion or race. This allowed him to captivate his audience and lent a hand to his poems’ continual popularity throughout time.
Who wrote The Odyssey and when did he write it?
Who Was Homer? The Greek poet Homer was born sometime between the 12th and 8th centuries BC, possibly somewhere on the coast of Asia Minor. He is famous for the epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey, which have had an enormous effect on Western culture, but very little is known about their alleged author.
Is the Odyssey written in verse?
It is written in Homeric Greek (an archaic version of Ionic Greek, with admixtures from certain other dialects such as Aeolic Greek), and comprises 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter verse, usually divided up into 24 books.
What was going on when The Odyssey was written?
The Iliad tells of the end of the war while The Odyssey focuses on the perilous journey home of Odysseus, one of the Greek generals. The generally accepted theory is the Trojan War, or the war it was based on, happened sometime in the 12th century BCE, or about 700 years before the Golden Age of Ancient Greece.
Which is the best biography of Homer ever written?
The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the Life of Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod.
What was the original purpose of Homer’s poems?
During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many interpreters, especially the Stoics, who believed that Homeric poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, regarded them as allegories, containing hidden wisdom. Perhaps partially because of the Homeric poems’ extensive use in education, many authors believed that Homer’s original purpose had been to educate.
When was the First Homeric poem written down?
The idea that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and first written down during the reign of Peisistratos is referenced by the first-century BC Roman orator Cicero and is also referenced in a number of other surviving sources, including two ancient Lives of Homer. From around 150 BC, the texts of the Homeric poems seem to have
Which is the oldest manuscript of Homer’s work?
Part of an eleventh-century manuscript, “the Townley Homer”. The writings on the top and right side are scholia. The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity. Nonetheless, the aims of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia.