HomerHomer (750? - 650? BCE) was a legendary Greek poet credited with authorship of the Iliad (720 BCE) and Odyssey (680 BCE), the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia, and various other lost or fragmentary works. There is considerable scholarly debate about whether or not Homer was actually a real person, or the name given to one or more oral poets who sang traditional epic material. Some scholars maintain a belief in the reality of an actual Homer. However, so little is known or even guessed of his actual life, that a common joke is that the poems "were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name." Works |