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.

The Mystery of Homer

Homer is a mystery. The Greek epic poet credited with the enduring epic tales of The Iliad and The Odyssey is an enigma insofar as actual facts of his life go. Some scholars believe him to be one man; others think these iconic stories were created by a group. A variation on the group idea stems from the fact that storytelling was an oral tradition and Homer compiled the stories, then recited them to memory.

Homer’s style, whoever he was, falls more in the category of minstrel poet or balladeer, as opposed to a cultivated poet who is the product of a fervent literary moment, such as a Virgil or a Shakespeare. The stories have repetitive elements, almost like a chorus or refrain, which suggests a musical element. However, Homer’s works are designated as epic rather than lyric poetry, which was originally recited with a lyre in hand, much in the same vein as spoken-word performances.

All this speculation about who he was has inevitably led to what is known as the Homeric Question—whether he actually existed at all. This is often considered to be the greatest literary mystery.

When Was Homer Born?

Much speculation surrounds when Homer was born because of the dearth of real information about him. Guesses at his birth date range from 750 BC all the way back to 1200 BC, the latter because The Iliad encompasses the story of the Trojan War, so some scholars have thought it fit to put the poet and chronicler nearer to the time of that actual event. But others believe the poetic style of his work indicates a much later period. Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484–425 BC), often called the father of history, placed Homer several centuries before himself, around 850 BC.

What Was Homer Like?

Virtually every biographical aspect ascribed to Homer is derived entirely from his poems. Homer is thought to have been blind, based solely on a character in The Odyssey, a blind poet/minstrel called Demodokos. A long disquisition on how Demodokos was welcomed into a gathering and regaled the audience with music and epic tales of conflict and heroes to much praise has been interpreted as Homer’s hint as to what his own life was like. As a result, many busts and statues have been carved of Homer with thick curly hair and beard and sightless eyes.

“Homer and Sophocles saw clearly, felt keenly, and refrained from much,” wrote Lane Cooper in The Greek Genius and Its Influence: Select Essays and Extracts in 1917, ascribing an emotional life to the writer. But he wasn't the first, nor was he the last. Countless attempts to recreate the life and personality of the author from the content of his epic poems have occupied writers for centuries.

'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey'

Homer's two epic poems have become archetypal road maps in world mythology. The stories provide an important insight into early human society, and illustrate, in some aspects, how little has changed. Even if The Iliad itself seems unfamiliar, the story of the siege of Troy, the Trojan War and Paris’ kidnapping of Helen, the world’s most beautiful woman, are all familiar characters or scenarios. Some scholars insist that Homer was personally familiar with the plain of Troy, due to the geographical accuracy in the poem.

The Odyssey picks up after the fall of Troy. Further controversy about authorship springs from the differing styles of the two long narrative poems, indicating they were composed a century apart, while other historians claim only decades –the more formal structure of The Iliad is attributed to a poet at the height of his powers, whereas the more colloquial, novelistic approach in The Odyssey is attributed to an elderly Homer.

Homer enriched his descriptive story with the liberal use of simile and metaphor, which has inspired a long path of writers behind him. His structuring device was to start in the middle–in medias res– and then fill in the missing information via remembrances.

Homer was the first Greek writer whose work survives. He was one of a long line of bards, or poets, who worked in the oral tradition. Homer and other bards of the time could recite, or chant, long epic poems. Both works attributed to Homer - The Iliad and The Odyssey - are over ten thousand lines long in the original. Homer was the composer of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two oldest and most important works of Greek literature. We know nothing certain about him. Though there is still disagreement, most people suspect his epics were written down around 750 B.C.E. In earlier centuries, many scholars argued that Homer was not one person, but a traditional name attached to works that were really collectively composed. This theory arose because of the huge success of a similar theory in biblical criticism, and because scholars were able to hear distinctive voices within the Homeric texts. More recently scholars have once again begun to entertain the idea that the Homeric texts were composed by a single person, based mainly on the intricacy and consistency of the plot and character construction. Was this person Homer? One famous saying claims, "either Homer or someone of the same name." Homer likely made his living as a rhapsode, a professional singer of verses, also known as a bard. Rhapsodes performed in competition at festivals and were probably also hired out to perform for the wealthy. Seven different places claimed in antiquity to be the birthplace of Homer. Two of the likely candidates are Smyrna and Chios, both among the many Greek settlements in Asia Minor or the west coast of modern-day Turkey. Early Greeks ascribed to Homer the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as several other works, including the Homeric Hymns. Scholars today doubt that a single person wrote these hymns, and consider them a traditional collection to which many poets added, under Homer's name.What is Epic? Epic poetry such as Gilgamesh, an Assyrian epic and the oldest example of epic in existence, Beowulf, and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are lengthy tales of the deeds of superhuman heroes of the past, who were often involved in great wars. Future generations often measured their own virtue against that of the epic heroes they read about. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey focus on the exploits of a single protagonist: the godlike warrior Achilles in the Iliad and the wily, cunning Odysseus in the Odyssey. The events Homer narrates have to do especially with the Trojan War and its aftermath, around the year 1250 B.C.E. at the end of the Bronze Age, a period named for the metal that was then chiefly in use. (Iron was rare and expensive at the time.) Typical of their genre, these epics depict great battles, solemn burials, lively feasts, rowdy assemblies, and powerful speeches. Homer's poetry was sung by bards, often to the accompaniment of a lyre. It is written in dactylic hexameter, a metrical pattern in which the line is broken up into six feet, each foot consisting of a long syllable followed by two short syllables. In any foot the two short syllables may be replaced by a second long syllable. Every single line of Greek in Homer's work follows this meter. In order to meet these tight metrical constraints, line-opening or line-closing epithets that meet the metrical standards, such as "godlike Achilles" or "much-enduring Odysseus," permeate the Homeric epics. These stock phrases make memorization as well as on-the-spot composition much easier for the bard.