Seven biographies of Homer and the story of his competing with Hesiod have reached the modern times. The material was compiled in the Hellenistic and Roman times, but it still contains a lot of data from the archaic and classical periods. The knowledge of Homer’s parents (Meles, Maion, Cretheis) has already come from Eugaion, Asius, Pherecydes, Hellanicus, Damastes and Stesimbrotus; his name (Homeros, Melesigenes) has been mentioned by Callinus, Archilochus, Asius, Eugaion and Critias; the data on his birthplace (Smyrna, Chios, Ios) can be found from Anaximenes, Pindar, Bacchylides, Stesimbrotus and Critias; his blindness from Semonides/Simonides and Thucydides; the “riddle of lice”, which is closely connected to the death of Homer, was known already to Heraclitus7; the knowledge of the contest with Hesiod may have even come from Lesches
The awareness of the details of Homer’s life at the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 5th century may well serve as an indication to an early source, written close to the end of the 6th century and commonly known and available to the later authors.
Besides, at the end of the 6th century an understanding about the authorship of archaic epics began to take a more or less clear form. Before that time Homer was considered to have composed almost all the epics. Presumably, the change in opinions took place at the end of the 6th century as the outcome of the so-called Athenian recension. From that time onwards the point of view that only the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Margites could be ascribed to Homer became more and more commonly recognized.
THE ARCHAIC BIOGRAPHY OF HOMER
Maarit Kivilo
Studia Humaniora Tartuensia, vol. 2 (2001)
Abstract
Seven biographies of Homer and the story of his competing with Hesiod have reached the modern times. The material was compiled in the Hellenistic and Roman times, but it still contains a lot of data from the archaic and classical periods. The knowledge of Homer’s parents (Meles, Maion, Cretheis) has already come from Eugaion, Asius, Pherecydes, Hellanicus, Damastes and Stesimbrotus; his name (Homeros, Melesigenes) has been mentioned by Callinus, Archilochus, Asius, Eugaion and Critias; the data on his birthplace (Smyrna, Chios, Ios) can be found from Anaximenes, Pindar, Bacchylides, Stesimbrotus and Critias; his blindness from Semonides/Simonides and Thucydides; the “riddle of lice”, which is closely connected to the death of Homer, was known already to Heraclitus7; the knowledge of the contest with Hesiod may have even come from Lesches
The awareness of the details of Homer’s life at the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 5th century may well serve as an indication to an early source, written close to the end of the 6th century and commonly known and available to the later authors.
Besides, at the end of the 6th century an understanding about the authorship of archaic epics began to take a more or less clear form. Before that time Homer was considered to have composed almost all the epics. Presumably, the change in opinions took place at the end of the 6th century as the outcome of the so-called Athenian recension. From that time onwards the point of view that only the Iliad
, the Odyssey 
and the Margites could be ascribed to Homer became more and more commonly recognized.
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