The Apotheosis of Homer is a common scene in classical and neo-classical

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

 art, showing the poet Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

's apotheosis

Apotheosis

Apotheosis is the glorification of a subject to divine level. The term has meanings in theology, where it refers to a belief, and in art, where it refers to a genre.In theology, the term apotheosis refers to the idea that an individual has been raised to godlike stature...

 or elevation to divine status.

Homer was the subject of a number of formal hero cults in classical antiquity. The earliest notable portrayal of the scene is a 3rd century BC marble relief by Archelaus of Priene

Archelaus of Priene

Archelaus of Priene was a Greek sculptor who lived close to 300 BC in Priene. He is remembered for his apotheosis of Homer, a marble relief aggrandising the poet that is now preserved in the British Museum....

, now in the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

. It was found in Italy, probably in 1658 AD, but is thought to have been sculpted in Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

. It shows Ptolemy and his wife or sister Arsinoe III standing beside a seated poet, flanked by figures from the Odyssey and Iliad, with the nine Muses standing above them and a procession of worshippers approaching an altar, believed to represent the Alexandrine Homereion. Apollo

Apollo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

, the god of music and poetry, also appears, along with a female figure tentatively identified as Mnemosyne

Mnemosyne

Mnemosyne , source of the word mnemonic, was the personification of memory in Greek mythology. This titaness was the daughter of Gaia and Uranus and the mother of the nine Muses by Zeus:* Calliope * Clio * Erato...

, the mother of the Muses. Zeus

Zeus

In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...

, the king of the gods, presides over the proceedings. The relief demonstrates vividly that the Greeks considered Homer not merely a great poet but the divinely-inspired reservoir of all literature.

From the 19th and 20th centuries, treatments of the subject by Wedgewood (based on a a 5th century BC vase misidentified in the 18th century as showing this scene), Ingres

The Apotheosis of Homer (Ingres)

The Apotheosis of Homer is a grand 1827 painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, now exhibited at the Louvre as INV 5417.-History:A state commission to decorate a ceiling of the musée Charles X at the Louvre , it formed part of a renovation project commissioned by Charles X to have himself...

 and Salvador Dalí

The Apotheosis of Homer (Dali)

The Apotheosis of Homer is a 1944–45 painting by Salvador Dalí. It is at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Staatsgalerie moderner Kunst, in Munich.-External links:*http://www.3d-dali.com/Tour/apotheosis.htm...

 survive.

A literary treatment of this subject was given by the German poet Leopold Schefer

Leopold Schefer

Leopold Schefer , German poet, novelist, and composer, was born in a small town in Upper Lusatia , only child of a poor country doctor.-Biography:...

, 1858: Homer’s Apotheose, his very last publication, itself a hexametric epos.