Homer is the ancient Greek poet credited with composing the Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational epics of Western literature. Ancient tradition placed him in Ionia — possibly on the island of Chios or in Smyrna — and dated him to around the eighth century BCE, though modern scholarship debates both his historical existence and the process by which the poems were composed. The Iliad recounts events during the Trojan War, centering on the wrath of Achilles; the Odyssey follows Odysseus on his ten-year journey home. Both epics draw on a long tradition of oral composition and have exerted incalculable influence on Western literature, art, and thought from antiquity through the present day.