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Culture Arena: Homing in on Homer down the centuries
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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 ...
