

Homer. Cartoon by Mark Fiore.

Homer (HOH-mur). Traditionally a blind minstrel or bard, who sang or performed to music epic poems set in the Heroic Age. The story of the Trojan War is related in Homer's epic, The Iliad. This nine-year conflict pitted Greek heroes against the city of Troy, on the western coast of what is now Turkey. Homer's other great epic, The Odyssey, narrates the homeward journey of the hero Odysseus after the war.

Another picture.