Homer was a Greek poet, recognized as the author of the great epics, the Iliad, the story of the siege of Troy, and the Odyssey, the tale of Ulysses’ s wanderings.
Allen Mandelbaum was born in 1926 and died in 2011. His translations of Homer, Dante, Virgil, Quasimodo, and Ungaretti were all published to great acclaim. His rendering of The Aeneid won the National Book Award. He was the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Humanities at Wake Forest University, North Carolina.