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Homer (Poet of ancient Greece)

a poet of ancient Greece, whose birthplace and date are entirely unknown. Seven cities or more, of ancient Greece, claimed him as a native, and he is generally conjectured to have lived between 1000 B. C. and 700 B. C.

He was reputed to have been blind, but the so-called Homeric hymn, from which the legend of him is inferred, is now held to have been of a much later date! than the "Iliad" and "Odyssey." These last-named poems were commonly known as Homer's from a very early period.

In 1795, however, a German critic, Fried- HOMER rich August Wolf, maintained that writing was unknown in Homer's time; that the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" were by different authors, put together in the 6th century B. C.

The weight of critical authority favors the hypothesis that they were at first the work of a single mind; though certain books and passages have been added.

The "Iliad" is the story of the siege of Ilium (Troy), and the attempt to rescue Helen, the wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta, whom Paris, son of Priam, King of Troy, had abducted.

HOMESTEAD where her success has been such that she has remained a member for over twenty years. Probably her most successful rôle is that of Amneris in Verdi's "Aïda."

HOMER The "Odyssey" relates the return, through many hardships and adventures, of Odysseus (Ulysses) to his home after the siege of Troy, his welcome by his faithful wife Penelope, and punishment of her presumptuous suitors. The style of these poems is simple and noble, the action rapid, and the theme dramatic and heroic.