Homer
Hirer principal figure of ancient Greek literature; the first European poet. Two epic poems are attributed to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. They are composed in a literary type of Greek, Ionic in basis with Aeolic admixtures. Ranked among the great works of Western literature, these two poems together constitute the prototype for all subsequent Western epic poetry. The “Homeric question” was the great dispute of scholarship in the 19th century. Scholars tried to analyze the two works by various tests, usually to show that they were strung together from older narrative poems. Recent evidence strongly suggests that the Iliad is the work of a single poet. Modern scholars are generally agreed that there was a poet named Homer who lived before 700 BC, probably in Asia Minor, and that the Iliad and the Odyssey are each the product of one poet’s work, developed out of older legendary matter.
