Why this site exists
The Homeric Epics are not one book but a pair of poems at the foundation of Greek literature. The Iliad follows a few weeks in the tenth year of the war at Troy; the Odyssey follows one man’s ten-year attempt to get home. This wiki treats the two poems separately, while connecting them through their shared gods, heroes, places, and values.
It is not an official companion or a critical commentary. Every chapter page marks the line range of the Murray text and quotes its opening lines; every article marks its spoiler level. Where the poems are silent, the wiki says so instead of filling the gap with later legend. Material from later tradition is labelled as such.
Core features
- Open reading: All wiki content can be read without signing in.
- Editorial control: Only editors can create, change, or delete entries; permissions are enforced on the server.
- Bidirectional links: In the text,
[[entry]]is parsed automatically, and every page shows its backlinks. - Graded spoilers: Three levels—none, light, heavy—with heavy content collapsed by default.
- Relationship graph: An interactive network generated from relations among people, factions, places, and events.
- Timeline: From the golden apple and the wrath of Achilles to the fall of Troy and the reckoning in Ithaca.
- Multiple works: A three-layer model of works, entities, and relations, with cross-work fields already reserved.
Data model
Every entry contains the same fields:
Entity types: WorksCharactersFactionsPlacesEventsItemsConceptsBooks. Relation types: FamilyLoveAlly / friendshipEnemyMentorCommandAffiliationPlaceEventItemOther.
Spoiler levels
Suitable for a first reading. Introduces identity, appearance, and basic setting without key twists or endings.
Covers early and middle plot, faction relations, and some background, but not the ending.
Covers reveals, deaths, final battles, and endings. Collapsed by default.
Admin
Only editors can change content. The sign-in link is the admin icon in the header. The default password is set through the environment variable ADMIN_PASSWORD; if it is not set, the initial password described in the project README is used. Change it before deploying publicly.
Editors can create, edit, and delete entries; edit infoboxes, sections, relations, and appearances; import and export JSON; and view statistics. Every write requires a valid session and CSRF token.
Technology
Node.js built-in modules, zero npm dependencies, a JSON data layer, and server-rendered HTML. The front end uses plain CSS and JavaScript with no external CDN. Data is stored in data/sites/homer-en/entities.json and data/sites/homer-en/site.json, with an automatic backup in the same directory’s backups/.
This wiki currently holds 66 entries, 244 relations, and 66 tags. The data model also exports to Wiki.js / Markdown for future migration.
Copyright and disclaimer
This is an unofficial reader’s wiki, not a critical edition. The English quotations are from A. T. Murray’s Loeb Classical Library translation (Iliad 1924–25; Odyssey 1919), which is in the public domain, as digitized by the Perseus Digital Library under CC BY-SA 4.0. Book summaries, wiki articles, and editorial notes are original work by the editors of this site. This site is not affiliated with the Perseus Project or the Loeb Classical Library.
Future plans
- Expand the secondary cast: Diomedes, Aias, Nestor, Priam, Andromache, Helen, Paris, Telemachus, and the suitors.
- Add place pages for Scheria, Aeaea, Pylos, Sparta, and the main stops of Odysseus’ wanderings.
- Build a book-by-book index of themes, formulas, and recurring scenes.
- Add more line-level citations and cross-references between the Greek and English texts.