Search Results: Homer

Homer (c. 750 BCE) is perhaps the greatest of all epic poets and his legendary status was well established by the time of Classical Athens. He composed (not wrote, since the poems were created and transmitted orally, they were not written...

A 1st century CE portrait of the Greek blind poet Homer, celebrated author of the Iliad and Odyssey. This bust is based on a 5th century BCE original but even that was an idealised representation as no contemporary portrait existed. (Vatican...

Women in the ancient Greek world had few rights in comparison to male citizens. Unable to vote, own land, or inherit, a woman's place was in the home and her purpose in life was the rearing of children. That is a general description and when...

Thersites is a character in the Iliad who made a stand against Agamemnon and the enterprise of the Trojan War. Homer chose to add Thersites’ speech after Achilles’ infamous dispute with Agamemnon, probably to emphasize the struggles that...

"Prisoners from the Front" by American painter Winslow Homer (1836–1910 CE) depicts the aftermath of a battle during the American Civil War. It portrays Union officer Brigadier General Francis Channing Barlow (1834–1896 CE) capturing several...

Marble relief depicting the Apotheosis (elevation to divine status) of the poet Homer with Zeus, Apollo and the Muses, signed by the sculptor Archelaus of Priene, ca. 225-205 BCE, found in Italy but thought to have been sculpted in Egypt...

Marble portrait bust of the blind poet Homer with Greek letters carved on each side, Antonine copy (2nd century CE) of a Hellenistic original of the 2nd century BCE, found 1780 near Baiae (Italy). Now in the British Museum.

Troy is the name of the Bronze Age city attacked in the Trojan War, a popular story in the mythology of ancient Greece, and the name given to the archaeological site in the north-west of Asia Minor (now Turkey) which has revealed a large...

Helen of Troy (sometimes called Helen of Sparta) is a figure from Greek mythology whose elopement with (or abduction by) the Trojan prince Paris sparked off the Trojan War. Helen was the wife of Menelaus, the king of Sparta, and considered...

The Trojan War was fought between Greeks and the defenders of the city of Troy in Anatolia sometime in the late Bronze Age. The story has grabbed the imagination for millennia but a conflict between Mycenaeans and Hittites may well have occurred...