Homer

Traditionally dated to around the 8th century BCE, Homer is the ancient Greek poet associated with the Iliad and the Odyssey, two of the best-known works to survive from the ancient world. Those poems shaped Greek education and storytelling for centuries and still stand at the center of the classical tradition.

Very little can be said with certainty about his life. Ancient traditions place him in the Greek world of Asia Minor, but scholars have long debated who Homer was, when exactly he lived, and whether the epics were created by a single poet, shaped from a long oral tradition, or both.

What is clear is the scale of his influence. The Iliad and the Odyssey helped define epic poetry and left a deep mark on later literature, art, and ideas of heroism, memory, and fate.