Homer, (Ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος) was an Ancient Greek poet, attributed to be the author of the two great epics: The Iliad and The Odyssey each of which follows an epic journey of two Greek heroes, Achilles and Odysseus respectively. The Iliad speaks on the deadly, ten year battle of Troy and the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, The Odyssey follows the journey of the King of Ithaca after the fall of Troy.
Tradition says that Homer is said to have been a blind poet but is not backed by reliable historical evidences. The most accessible one being the portrayal of a blind minstrel who sings a poem about the fall of Troy in the Odyssey. But there is no reason to believe that the poet was describing himself in this scene even though he is believed to have sung as ballads and the lost tales of war heroes giving it the name Homeric hymns. Some claim that he was illiterate. Scholars are uncertain about whether or not Homer ever existed but, his works are dated back to the 9th or 8th century BCE to being a native of Ionia, present day Turkey. The belief that Homer was from Ionia, present day Asia Minor, seems reasonable as the poems are predominantly Ionic dialect. The first historian, Herodotus claims that Homer could have lived no more than 400 years before his own time in the 5th century BCE. History also suggests that Homer could have lived not much later than the devastating Trojan War. There are also many oddly precise geographical references but on the other hand, chronologically inaccurate mentions puzzles historians about archaic fact that homer has weaved into the epics. Some claim that he was not the sole creator of The Iliad and The Odyssey, that many bards shaped and formed it as the tale of Troy was passed one from generation to generation orally. There are speculations of him using references and borrowed pieces of works from previous bards. As with the great English epic, Beowulf, the Iliad and the Odyssey may have existed as oral tradition for some time and eventually were put into final, written form by a single poetic genius.
Archilochus, Alcman, Tyrtaeus and Callinus in the 7th century BCE and Sappho in the early 6th have adapted Homeric metre and phraseology for their own compositions. Homer's epic poetries are written in the "artificial literary language or Kunstsprache" and uses only hexameter poetry. They were unrhymed dactylic hexameter (a hexameter consisting of five dactyls and either a spondee or trochee, in which any of the first four dactyls, and sometimes the fifth, may be replaced by a spondee) as ancient Greek was quantity based, rather than stress based.
Early 4th century BCE, Alcidamus composed a fictional account of poetry on Homer and Hesiod, a poetry contest at Chalcis. Homer, being the greater poet was expected to win as he answered all of Hesiod's questions and riddles with ease. Then, they were invited to sing and present the best part of their poems. Hesiod selected the beginning of Work and Days whilst Homer chose a part from The Iliad about the warriors in formation and facing the Troy. The crowd acclaimed Homer to be the victor, but the judge awarded Hesiod the prize: the poet who praised husbandry over the one who sang tales about death and slaughter.
Homer died in Ios, Greece. While little if anything is known of Homer's life, his works are an everlasting tribute to him to keep his name alive in the modern ages. For thousands of years, the Iliad and the Odyssey have been the standards by which poets of all languages have measured themselves. Homer has superseded in the understanding of human nature in all its aspects, from his keen observation of people in an era to his essential sanity and good taste, and for his superb control of all the technical devices of his medium.
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