Playwright, The Odyssey

The Greek poet Homer was born sometime between the 12th and 8th centuries BC, possibly somewhere on the coast of Asia Minor. Homer is the name ascribed by the ancient Greeks to the semi-legendary author of The Iliad and The Odyssey, two epic poems which are the central works of Greek literature. The Iliad is set during the Trojan War, the 10-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, but focuses on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles lasting a few weeks during the last year of the war. The Odyssey focuses on the journey home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, after the fall of Troy. Little is known about their alleged author. Modern scholarly opinion on the authorship question falls into two camps: One group holds that most of The Iliad and (according to some) The Odyssey is the work of a single writer. The other considers them to be worked and re-worked by many contributors and that “Homer” is best seen as a label for an entire tradition.