Homer
Homer lived in one of the Greek cities on the Ionian coast of Turkey- probably Smyrna (present day Izmir). He collected and then wrote down stories of the Trojan War. The war had been fought just up the coast at Troy some four hundred before Homer lived. These stories had been told for hundreds of years. They had been recited by great oral poets, storytellers, who were honored by their society for their ability to know by heart thousands of lines of the whole long story of Troy. Homer's decision to write down these stories is one of the most important moments in all of Western Civilization. It heralds the transformation of the older oral culture to the new culture of writing. And it preserved the text of The Iliad for us.
- Photos
- The Iliad
- The Trojan War
- Olympian Gods
- Bibiliography
