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Homeric Education

Homeric Education: The Iliad and the Odyssey

Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, appearing around 850 B.C., were the first significant historical works in Greek culture. Recounting the early episodes of Greek history, the Homeric epics embodied the wisdom and crystallized the traditions, beliefs, and values that constituted the ancient Greek cultural life style.

Educationally, Homer's poems were instruments of enculturation which introduced the young Greek to the ethos, manners, and aspirations of his cultural group. Resembling the chivalric literature of the Middle Ages, the Iliad and the Odyssey told the youth of heroic ancestors. Through the songs and stories of the inspirational literature, young children became familiar with those heroic exemplars, or cultural models, after which they could pattern their own values.

As significant poetical, aesthetic, historical, and pedagogical works, the Iliad and the Odyssey told Greek generations of that moral climate in which heroes, by combining wisdom and action, sought and won glory. As foundations of western education and civilization they continue over the centuries to offer insight to children and adults on moral education.

Homer was believed to be a blind, Ionian poet to whom the Iliad and the Odyssey are attributed. As early as the Hellenistic period, a few scholars insisted that the epics were the work of different authors. Orthodox opinion, however, claimed that Homer had composed both works, and numerous biographies were written about him. Seven cities claimed to have been his birthplace: Chios, Colophone, Smyrna, Rhodes, Argos, Athens, and Salamis. Not much evidence exists about Homer, including whether or not he ever in fact existed.