Homer
(ca. 800 B.C.)

Homer is thought to have been born sometime between 700 B.C. and 1000 B.C.—possibly in western Asia Minor. According to tradition, he was blind. He did not write his two great epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, as a modern novelist writes a novel. Rather, he composed them orally by assembling a number of earlier and shorter narrative songs. He probably traveled around Greece reciting them on many occasions. In later centuries, the two epics were the basis of Greek and Roman education.

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