The Blind Poet

Three or four centuries after the Trojan War, a blind poet named Homer wandered Greece reciting verses about the heroes and the war. He had been robbed and blinded by pirates. Instead of giving up, he turned his knowledge of the old stories into beautiful poetry, accompanying himself on a lyre. Young men learned his poems and spread them throughout Greece and beyond. His two great poems are the Iliad (about the Trojan War) and the Odyssey (about Ulysses' ten-year journey home). Fifty cities later claimed to be his birthplace.