The Odyssey

There has been fervent debate, especially since the 19th century, over the authorship of both The Iliad and The Odyssey. Some scholars maintain that they are the work of multiple writers, while others believe that both are the product of a blind bard named Homer. It is now generally agreed that a singer-poet named Homer from the city of Smyrna on the western coast of Asia Minor did exist around the time of the composition of both poems, though the rest is still disputable. One likely theory is that the illiterate Homer had memorized heroic stories that had been passed down through the ages and altered them slightly when he sang them to audiences and strummed a simple stringed instrument for musical accompaniment. Someone else then cobbled together Homer's various narratives and wrote down first The Iliad, then The Odyssey, most likely on a papyrus scroll. The stories were then copied, and undoubtedly evolved, over time, helping explain particularly the uneven final third of The Odyssey.