Homer: Biography, Achievements & Lasting Legacy

The Homeric poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor. To Plato, Homer was in simple words the one who "has educated Greece" (τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν, tēn Helláda pepaídeuken). In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets; in the preface to his translation of the Iliad, Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets". From antiquity to the present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of literature, music, art, and film.

The question of by whom, when, where, and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars generally regard the two poems as the works of separate authors. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC. Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region including the central part of the western coast of Anatolia in present-day Turkey, and the Greek islands of Chios and Samos. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.