Homer is the name the ancient Greeks gave to the poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Nothing reliable is known of his life; tradition made him a blind bard from Ionia. Most scholars think the poems grew out of a long tradition of oral composition and reached roughly their present form in the eighth or seventh century BCE, whether through one master poet or several.
The Iliad tells of a few weeks in the tenth year of the Greek siege of Troy, and its subject, announced in the first line, is the wrath of Achilles. A plague sent by Apollo ravages the Greek camp because Agamemnon, commander of the Achaeans, has refused to return the captive daughter of Apollo's priest Chryses.
The Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus's long return from Troy to Ithaca and of the household that must survive his absence. The poem opens not with Odysseus but with disorder: his son Telemachus is growing up under the pressure of suitors who consume the estate and demand that Penelope choose a new husband.
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