1999/12/01 by M. L. West
Social Sciences · #Classical Antiquity Studies
paper · doi:10.1093/cq/49.2.364
openalex publication_date 1999/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
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.