[rustymonday]

Ancient tradition unanimously ascribed the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey to Homer. We know nothing about Homer, except that he likely lived around the area of Smyrna and that he may have been blind.

Butler's theory is nice and all, but I would give significantly more weight to what ancient writers had to say about Homer.

[scientator]

There were all kinds of competing legends about Homer back in ancient times. Many cities claimed that he had once lived there. And there was even an ancient legend that both the Iliad and Odyssey were written by a woman named Phantasia, said to have been the daughter of Nicarchus who lived in Memphis. She supposedly left the texts of the two epic poems in the library of Memphis where Homer found them and then took credit for them as his own. This legend was brought to Samuel Butler's attention following the publication of his theory, but he insisted he hadn't been aware of it.