page_title: Homeric Question
hierarchical_section_title: Homeric Question
caption_attribution_description: One of two surviving painting of a series of seven by Rembrandt, Guercino, Matia Preti, Salvator Rosa, and Giacinto Brandi. Parts were removed from all four sides as a result of fire damage, following an earthquake that struck Antonio Ruffo's palace in Messina in 1783. Only two fingers remained of the pupils that were present in the complete painting.
context_page_description: The Homeric Question concerns the doubts and consequent debate over the identity of Homer, the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey, and their historicity. The subject has its roots in classical antiquity and the scholarship of the Hellenistic period, but has flourished among Homeric scholars of the 19th and 20th centuries.
  The main subtopics of the Homeric Question are:
  "Who is Homer?"
  "Are the Iliad and the Odyssey of multiple or single authorship?"
  "By whom, when, where, and under what circumstances were the poems composed?"
  To these questions the possibilities of modern textual criticism and archaeological answers have added a few more:
  "How reliable is the tradition embodied in the Homeric poems?"
  "How old are the oldest elements in Homeric poetry which can be dated with certainty?"
context_section_description: The Homeric Question concerns the doubts and consequent debate over the identity of Homer, the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey, and their historicity (especially concerning the Iliad). The subject has its roots in classical antiquity and the scholarship of the Hellenistic period, but has flourished among Homeric scholars of the 19th and 20th centuries.
  The main subtopics of the Homeric Question are:
  "Who is Homer?"
  "Are the Iliad and the Odyssey of multiple or single authorship?"
  "By whom, when, where, and under what circumstances were the poems composed?"
  To these questions the possibilities of modern textual criticism and archaeological answers have added a few more:
  "How reliable is the tradition embodied in the Homeric poems?"
  "How old are the oldest elements in Homeric poetry which can be dated with certainty?"
caption: Rembrandt's Homer (1663)
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