Who WAS Homer?

And did he exist at all?

Mar 21, 2024

∙ Paid

Dear Classical KIDS,

Homer is considered one of the greatest poets who ever lived. His poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are two of the most important and influential books ever written.

But who was Homer? Was he a truck driver? No, trucks didn’t exist then. Was he a kinder egg opener? No, they didn’t even have chocolate yet! Poor kids, what did they have for dessert?

The answer is a little bit complicated…

For a long time people have questioned not just who Homer was, but if he existed at all. Did Homer actually write the Iliad and the Odyssey, and if not, then who?

The Life of Homer

In ancient times, people thought Homer wrote his great works in the Greek Dark Ages (9-8th century BC). They thought he was born on the island of Chios and was blind. They believed he was a wandering bard, who sang his epics at festivals. The poems are based on events and heroes from the Mycenaean Age (12th-11th century BC), which were first stories that were told and then later written down. Though the stories had been changed and edited, it was still believed that the Iliad and Odyssey were written by one man: Homer.

However, even back then, there were some who questioned if Homer really did write the epics…

The Homeric Question

Now we’re going to jump forward in time quite a bit. Just a couple of millennia!

Beginning in the 1600s, critics began to suspect that the works of Homer were not actually written by just one person.

They believed that ‘Homer’ was the name given to a much larger oral tradition of storytelling. There is archeological evidence that the objects in the story come from different time periods, some later than when the story took place! This may show that the most famous epics in all of literature were not written by one man named Homer. It was, instead, the creation of many minds.

So Who DID Write the Iliad and Odyssey?

Today, many think it was a group of wandering bards who sang stories about the Trojan War, events and heroes from the Mycenaean Age. Later bards added to the stories, including local details and myths.

It is possible that Homer was a famous performer, and the epics were mistakenly attributed to him. It’s also possible that the popular image of Homer as the blind bard was simply a creation of an oral tradition. Either way, we are grateful that these works have survived thousands of years so we can still learn from and enjoy them today.