After a brief introduction on the often difficult and troubled relationship Friedrich Nietzsche had with his profession as a Classical philologist and with many of its representatives, our paper focuses on his three most significant contributions to Homeric studies: (1) his opening lecture at the chair in Basel, Homer and Classical Philology (1869); (2) his study of the Florentine manuscript on the “Contest of Homer and Hesiod”, published in two instalments (1870 and 1873) in the Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, and (3) his brilliant 1872 essay on “The agôn in Homer”. The central part of the first of these texts is extensively analyzed with the purpose of obtaining an in-depth understanding of certain widely-discussed passages. Additionally, several points of continuity between Nietzche’s early works and the subsequent development of his thought are underlined.