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Although "Homer" is a Greek name, attested in Aeolic-speaking areas, nothing definite is known of him; yet rich traditions grew up, or were conserved, purporting to give details of his birthplace and background. Many of them were purely fantastical: the satirist Lucian, in his fabulous True History, makes him out to be a Babylonian called Tigranes, who only assumed the name Homer when taken "hostage" (homeros) by the Greeks. When the Emperor Hadrian asked the Oracle at Delphi who Homer really was, the Pythia proclaimed that he was Ithacan, the son of Epikaste and Telemachus, from the Odyssey. These stories proliferated and were incorporated into a number of Lives of Homer compiled from the Alexandrian period onwards. The most common version has Homer born in the Ionian region of Asia Minor, at Smyrna, or on the island of Chios, and dying on the Cycladic island of Ios. A connection with Smyrna seems to be alluded to in a legend that his original name was "Melesigenes" ("born of Meles", a river which flowed by that city), and of the nymph Kretheis. Internal evidence from the poems gives some support to this connection: familiarity with the topography of this area of Asia Minor's littoral obtrudes in place-names and details, and similes evocative of local scenery: the meadow birds at the mouth of the Caystros (Iliad 2.459ff.), a storm in the Icarian sea (Iliad 2.144ff.), and wind-lore (Iliad 2.394ff: 4.422ff: 9.5), or that women of either Maeonia or Caria stain ivory with scarlet (Iliad 4.142).
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Homer
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Punsara Amarasinghe (10/24/2009 2:04:00 AM)
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I was inspired by the great poetic insperation of Homer..........His great epics impacted to change the entire western culture..............i love homer.......!
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Tony Powell (4/21/2008 10:02:00 PM)
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Please amend your otherwisw excellent website by giving Homer's approximate date to c 1100 BC. The initials BCE are unnecessarily offensive
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