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The invention of Homer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

M. L. West
Affiliation:
All Souls College, Oxford

Extract

I shall argue for two complementary theses: firstly that ‘Homer’ was not the name of a historical poet, but a fictitious or constructed name, and secondly that for a century or more after the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey there was little interest in the identity or the person of their author or authors. This interest only arose in the last decades of the sixth century; but once it did, ‘Homer’ very quickly became an object of admiration, criticism, and biographical construction.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1999

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