Homer

Homer is thought to have composed his works around the late eighth or early seventh century BC, though scholars debate whether one person wrote both poems or if they came from separate hands. The Iliad follows a quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles in the final year of the Trojan War; the Odyssey tracks Odysseus's ten-year struggle home after Troy's fall, navigating divine punishment and his own endurance. Written in Homeric Greek—a literary blend of Ionic and Aeolic dialects—the epics were likely transmitted orally before being set down. Ancient Greece treated them as foundational: Plato cr…