Rediscovering Homer facts for kids

Rediscovering Homer is a book from 2006 by Andrew Dalby. It explores big questions about two very old Greek poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. These poems are usually thought to be written by a poet named Homer. Dalby's book looks at where these stories came from, when they were made, and who really wrote them.

Exploring the Ancient World of Homer

This book started from ideas Dalby had in the 1990s. He believed the Iliad and Odyssey fit into the same time as other early Greek poets like Archilochus and Sappho. Many people thought these epic poems were much older than the personal poems of these other writers. However, Dalby suggests the epics might be from a similar time, but just a different style of writing.

From Oral Stories to Written Books

Dalby's book explains what the Iliad and Odyssey are about and why they are important. He also guesses how these stories traveled through time. He thinks they started as stories told out loud, passed down from person to person. Later, someone finally wrote them down. This change from spoken stories to written books is a big part of his ideas.

Who Wrote Them Down? A New Idea

Dalby focuses on the unknown poet who put the Iliad and Odyssey into writing. This happened long after the time of the traditional Homer. Dalby points out that no early writer ever named this person. We don't know if they were a man or a woman. They were definitely not Homer, who was seen as a poet from a much older time.

Dalby suggests something interesting: "it is possible, and even probable, that this poet was a woman." He thinks this idea helps explain why these poems are so good. They are "more subtle, more complex, more universal" than many other epic poems. This is just a guess, but it helps Dalby understand some parts of the stories better.

Other Poets with Similar Ideas

The idea that a woman might have written these poems is not completely new.

• An old story told by Eustathius of Thessalonica said that an Egyptian priestess named Phantasia wrote both epics.
• Samuel Butler wrote a book called The Authoress of the Odyssey. In it, he said a woman from Sicily wrote the Odyssey a long, long time ago.
• Robert Graves also explored a similar idea in his novel Homer's Daughter.

What Others Think

Even before Dalby's book came out, some experts like Anthony Snodgrass thought this idea was "far-fetched." He joked that a woman would be "bored out of her mind" writing the Iliad. Other people who reviewed the book, even if they liked it, were still unsure about the idea of a woman writing the poems.

As Dalby notes, the Muses can "tell many lies as if true". This applies to ancient songsters and the modern scholars who study them.

—Palaima, 2007.