Telemachus and the Telemachy (Books 1–4).

Fragments of Homer account for nearly half of all identifiable Greek literary papyrus finds.

Homer's works, which are about fifty percent speeches, provided models in persuasive speaking and writing that were emulated throughout the ancient and medieval Greek worlds. The formative influence of the Homeric epics in shaping Greek culture was widely recognized, and Homer was described as the teacher of Greece. Most modern researchers place Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BCE. Herodotus estimates that Homer lived 400 years before his own time, which would place him at around 850 BCE, while other ancient sources claim that he lived much nearer to the supposed time of the Trojan War, in the early 12th century BCE. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature. In the Western classical tradition, Homer (Greek: Ὅμηρος) is considered the author of The Iliad and The Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest of ancient Greek epic poets.

Given widespread illiteracy, the poem was performed by an aoidos or rhapsode, and more likely to be heard than read. In antiquity, Homer's authorship of the poem was not questioned, but contemporary scholarship predominantly assumes that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed independently, and the stories themselves formed as part of a long oral tradition. The Odyssey was originally composed in Homeric Greek in around the 8th or 7th century BCE and, by the mid-6th century BCE, had become part of the Greek literary canon. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage. After the war itself, which lasted ten years, his journey lasted for ten additional years, during which time he encountered many perils and all his crew mates were killed. It follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. As with the Iliad, the poem is divided into 24 books. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still read by contemporary audiences. The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer.

The iliad and odyssey were