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Homer

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From: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition
Date: 20080415
Author:

Homer principal figure of ancient Greek literature; the first European poet.

Works, Life, and Legends

Two epic poems are attributed to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. They are composed in a literary type of Greek, Ionic in basis with Aeolic admixtures. Ranked among the great works of Western literature, these two poems together constitute the prototype for all subsequent Western epic poetry.

The "Homeric question" was the great dispute of scholarship in the 19th cent. Scholars tried to analyze the two works by various tests, usually to show that they were strung together ...

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