Homer (750 BC-) was a Chian Greek poet and the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two foundational epic poems of Ancient Greek literature.
Biography[]
Homer was born on the Greek island of Chios in 750 BC, and he was said to have been the son of the River Meles and the nymph Critheis. The blind Homer became a wandering bard who composed several epic poems about Greek mythology and the Mycenaean era. His works were set in a time in which hoplite battle tactics, human burials, and literacy were unknown to the Ancient Greeks, and, during the 8th century BC, he composed the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems retelling the events of the ten-year-long Trojan War and Odysseus' ten-year-long return voyage home. Professional reciters, known as rhapsodes, retold and embellished Homer's tales, which combined Greek history with Greek mythology. Homer later died on the island of Ios.
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