Homer

     Greek literature contains two epics known as the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Greeks believed believed a storyteller named Homer wrote the poems about 1200 years before the Common Era (or before the birth of Jesus Christ). We don't know much about Homer, we don't even know he existed, but the poems do give us an insight into early Greek civilization.

     The ancient Greeks considered the Iliad and the Odyssey great ancient classical literature in the sixth century before the common era. The poems' dialect suggest that Homer came from Ionia, on the western coast of the modern nation of Turkey. Greek legends suggest that Homer was blind, but the vivid imagery of the Iliad and the Odyssey suggest that the author of the poems must have had sight at some point in his life. Modern scholars believe that the poems were based on oral legends, but they contain almost 28,000 verses, so they had to have been written down at some point, because few people could memorize that many verses. This tells us that the Greeks had some form of writing long before their civilization flourished.