Homer is the name for the putative author(s) of the poems known since antiquity as the Iliad and Odyssey. The 16,000 lines of the former and 12,000 lines of the latter make up the bulk of Early Greek epic, which also includes about 2,000 lines of Hesiod as well as another 2,500 lines of Homeric Hymns (not by Homer), and a narrative poem called The Shield of Herakles.
The texts
The Iliad and Odyssey have been transmitted with exceptional fidelity since the second century BCE. The many papyrus fragments since that period show that texts had pretty much the same lines in the same order, and the manuscript tradition of Homer shows less internal variance than the texts of Shakespeare. Before the second century BCE textual variance was much greater. We know this from...
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Citation: Mueller, Martin. "Homer". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 November 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2190, accessed 10 December 2025.]
