Seven cities laid claim to the birth of Homer (Smyrna and Chios the most prominent) and eight different epochs (within a range of three hundred years) were assigned to him. His obscure biographical details give room for the conception of legends concerning his family background, his purported blindness and poverty, making him a wandering bard who recites poetry for living and who finally commits suicide at an old age. All these, along with the myth that he never really existed and that the poems were created by many poets, accords with the "Homeric question" which was raised by famous scholars regarding the begetting of the two great epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Especially in the case of the Iliad, which, at times, presents a disjointed structure, with quite a few inconsistencies as well as with the installment of long insertions, there were many researchers who have attributed its creation to many poets, arguing that Homer was a purely mythical figure. Investigation has concluded that there is enough unity and a definite individualism, which supports the conviction that Homer was the sole creator of both epic poems. Before his time-we can even assume during the Mycenaean period-there was an epic poem tradition passing from generation to generation until Homer, in the eighth century, gave them new life, narrative movement, and a composition which places them among the greatest literary masterpieces ever. In ancient times, both the Iliad and the Odyssey were attributed to Homer; Herodotus names him the creator of the two epics and, under the tyrant Peisistratos, the poems were recorded in a written form. Plato, by viewing him in connection with pedagogy and ethics, blamed him for introducing "theatricality" and removing the audience from the world of Ideas and Aristotle considered him an unrivalled poet. During the 17th and 18th century, the dispute for the parenthood of the two poems emerged in discussions with the participation of well-known researcher such as D'Aubignac and Wolf, during which a hypothesis was developed that, prior to their recording in a text form, the poems were preserved as distinct epic ballads, each one constituting an autonomous whole, recited in isolated events and-why not- by different authors.

The Iliad and the Odyssey, written centuries after the events described, offer us an amalgamation of cultures spanning from the heroic age of the Mycenaean kingdoms to the times when Homer lived. Through the joy of living (in an agricultural economy, governed by warrior-aristocracy), he exposes the reader to the pain and tragedy of life, of war and wanderings, from the noble actions of the heroes to their individual humiliation and their display of strong sentiments.