![]() ![]() We can never be certain that both these stories belonged to Homer. ![]() His adventures are many and memorable before he gets back to Ithaca and his faithful wife Penelope. Odysseus, on his way home from the Trojan War, encounters all kinds of marvels from one-eyed giants to witches and beautiful temptresses. The Odyssey is the original collection of tall traveller's tales. Mortal men played out their fate under the gaze of the gods. In the Iliad Homer sang of death and glory, of a few days in the struggle between the Greeks and the Trojans. Homer must have had an amazing memory but was helped by the formulaic poetry style of the time. Both works attributed to Homer - the Iliad and the Odyssey - are over ten thousand lines long in the original. Homer and other bards of the time could recite, or chant, long epic poems. He was one of a long line of bards, or poets, who worked in the oral tradition. Homer was the first Greek writer whose work survives. Homer was probably born around 725BC on the Coast of Asia Minor, now the coast of Turkey, but then really a part of Greece. ![]()
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