Interpretive portrait
Homer
c. 8th century BCE
PoetryLiteratureAncient Greek
The name attached to the Iliad and the Odyssey, and possibly to no single person.
Interpretive portrait. No historical likeness exists, and possibly no single historical person; this portrait is interpretive.
Why they still matter
Greek thought argued with Homer for a thousand years; he is the shared inheritance the philosophers pushed against.
The world they thought in
Oral epic tradition of archaic Greece.
What they wrote
The questions they worked on
The good life
How should a person live, given that they will die?
Take this further
Ponderers is the historical layer. A rabbit hole brings the same question into what people are arguing about now.