Who is the author of The Odyssey?

The author of The Odyssey is traditionally identified as Homer. The epic follows Odysseus, king of Ithaca, during his ten-year struggle to return home after the Trojan War.

Homer is also credited with The Iliad, the other great surviving Greek epic. The Odyssey was composed in Homeric Greek and was likely shaped through centuries of oral storytelling before reaching its written form around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. It is divided into 24 books and contains more than 12,000 lines of dactylic hexameter.

Homer’s identity remains uncertain. Ancient traditions describe him as a blind poet from Ionia or the island of Chios, but many details of his life are legendary. Modern scholars also debate whether one historical poet composed the entire work, since the poem developed from oral traditions and may have been transmitted by many singers. Even so, Homer remains the single canonical answer in general-knowledge quizzes. A common mix-up is naming Virgil, who wrote the Roman epic The Aeneid centuries later.