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Culture Arena: Homing in on Homer down the centuries

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From: The Scotsman
Date: 20040522
Author:Allan Massie

WE KNOW NOTHING, really, about the man Homer, not even the century he lived in or where he was born. Some place him as far back as the 12th century BC; others advance him to the seventh. At least seven cities have boasted of being his birthplace. The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature says that Chios and Smyrns (now Izmir) "have the best traditional claims".

Homer is a mere name, attached to The Iliad and The Odyssey. We can't even be sure the author of these poems was a single person, though modern scholars are again inclined to accept the ancient Greek view of Homer the individual ...

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