Homer ( C. 850 – 750 BCE) was an
Ionian Greek who composed his songs orally. He was obviously a polished poet, following a long
oral tradition and drawing on a large corpus of heroic stories.
The Homeric Question: Inconsistencies
in The Iliad led past scholars to question the single-author tradition. For
example, The Iliad mentions different metals, bronze and iron,
different shields, round and tower, and different social customs, dowry and bride price,
that are characteristic of different historical periods.