Homer, the greatest name in the history of epic poetry, has showed his wisdom and creativity in the many epic poems that he had written. The details of the life of Homer are unknown to many. Although, the central facet in which all these legendary traditions agree, is that the poet was an Asiatic Greek, and though other places are named, the greatest amount of legendary evidence clearly points to Smyrna as the city of his birth. The age of Homer is much more doubtful, but it is certain that he lived considerably before the year 776 B.C., the commencement of Greek chronology by Olympiads. Greek philosophers place the age of Homer 400 years before their own time, that is about 850 B.C., and that date has been received as the most probable. Tradition represents Homer as blind, and as reciting his poems as he travelled from city to city. The principal poems which are accredited to Homer, are the Iliad and The Odyssey, and these stand as the greatest epics of any age. The Trojan war is the great central event which they celebrate. The materials out of which they are constructed, grow out of the real life of the people who experienced the events of the battle. In this view the Iliad is as valuable for the earliest history of the Hellenic race. But it is not for the Greeks alone that Homer possesses an important historical value: he is for all ages an important record of the earliest stages of human society, second only to the books of Moses. Homer is known across the world as the greatest epic poet of all time. 
|  | Journey Through The Odyssey |
