Most people figure that when Homer finished writing The Iliad, publishing houses were breaking down his door to get first crack at it. Nothing could be further from the truth. When Homer put the ...

Purchase this and other timeless New Criterion essays in our hard-copy reprint series. Only someone with divine blood would be capable of producing such masterpieces. What couldn’t be interpolated ...

THE Homeridae — “Sons of Homer” — a family guild of Ionian bards based on Chios, enlarged their ancestor’s first short draft of the Iliad to twenty-four books and became collectively known as “ Homer.

From ancient Greece to Normandy, the landing of a great army on a hostile shore is an archetypal moment in Western civilization, told and retold in every medium we have. The latest incarnation, Troy, ...

In Athens, Greece, circa 450 BCE, the blind poet Homer was bigger than the Beatles. His The Iliad and The Odyssey put him on the level of John, Paul, Luke, and Matthew in terms of laying the literary ...

Jamie James is a critic and the author of the novel "Andrew and Joey." The literature of war begins with literature itself, with “The Iliad.” Homer’s epic about the Greek siege of Troy, composed ...

Out of the darkness, the epic poet Homer arrives to once again sing of the anger and devastation that is war. It is “An Iliad” like you’ve never seen, and celebrated stage, television and film actor ...

Barbara Weiden Boyd is a big fan of Ovid, the Latin poet who died just about two thousand years ago. Apart from being a great humorist, she said, Ovid should be applauded for his brilliant re-working ...

The name Homer holds a dear place in many people’s adolescent memories. There’s the poet who blessed literature and history with the “Iliad” and “Odyssey.” Then there’s Homer Simpson, the flawed yet ...