Homer, Greek Poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey
Almost 3,000 years ago, a Greek poet named Homer gave us two of the most famous stories ever told: the Iliad, about the Trojan War, and the Odyssey, about the hero Odysseus and his long trip home. From Achilles to Odysseus, nearly every story about Greek heroes you've heard traces back to these two poems in some way.
The ancient Greeks also credited Homer with a collection of hymns to the gods and a silly little war story about frogs and mice. Today scholars think later poets wrote those in Homer's style, but they've traveled under his name for more than 2,000 years, so they're here too.
Jump to: Who Was Homer? | The Iliad | The Odyssey | Homeric Hymns | Frogs and Mice
Who Was Homer?
Nobody knows very much about Homer, and that's part of what I find interesting about him. He still has such an impact on the stories we here today and he's a mystery!
The ancient Greeks believed he was a blind poet who lived around the 8th century BC, somewhere in the Greek islands or along the coast of what is now Turkey. Seven different cities claimed to be his birthplace.
Homer's poems weren't written down at first. They were sung out loud by traveling poets called bards, who memorized thousands of lines and performed them at feasts and festivals. Many historians think the Iliad and the Odyssey grew over generations of storytelling, and some wonder whether "Homer" was one person at all. Maybe he was sort of like "Mother Goose" is today.
Whoever he was, the Greeks treated Homer's poems the way we treat great classics today. Kids in ancient Greece learned to read using them.
The Iliad
The Iliad takes place in the tenth and final year of the Trojan War, when the Greeks have spent a decade trying to win back Helen, the queen who was taken to Troy by the prince Paris.
The story centers on Achilles, the greatest Greek warrior, and his anger after a quarrel with the Greek leader Agamemnon. On the Trojan side stands Hector, Troy's bravest defender, fighting to protect his city and family. The gods take sides too, and they meddle in the battle constantly.
Here's a fun fact: the Trojan Horse isn't actually in the Iliad. The poem ends before Troy falls. The horse story is told later, in the Odyssey. The Iliad ended on a bit of a cliff hanger.
The Odyssey
The Odyssey picks up after the war. Odysseus, the clever king of Ithaca who came up with the Trojan Horse, just wants to go home to his wife Penelope and son Telemachus. It takes him ten more years.
Along the way he outwits a Cyclops, loses his crew's bag of winds, escapes the witch Circe, visits the Underworld, sails past the Sirens and the sea monster Scylla, and finally makes it back to Ithaca, where a palace full of unwelcome suitors is waiting for him.
The poem gave us the word "odyssey," which we still use today for any long, adventurous journey. It's still being retold, too. One of the most popular new versions is Epic: The Musical by Jorge Rivera-Herrans, which turns the Odyssey into 40 songs split across nine "sagas."
The Homeric Hymns
The Homeric Hymns are 33 poems, each one honoring a different god. They tell many stories that I immediately recognized and it was wonderful to discover what the original source of these myths are. Yay Homer!
The Battle of the Frogs and Mice
This short, funny poem is a spoof of the Iliad. It starts when a frog king offers a mouse a ride across the pond on his back. A water snake pops up, the frog dives in fright, and the poor mouse falls off and drowns.
The mice declare war. Both armies arm themselves like Homer's heroes, with bean pods for shin guards, needles for spears and nutshells for helmets. Up on Mount Olympus, the gods argue over whose side to take. Athena refuses to help the mice because they nibbled holes in her robe, and she won't help the frogs either because they kept her awake croaking. In the end, Zeus sends an army of crabs to break up the fight, and the war is over in a single day.