little is known as
of his parentage and birth-place. However, the general account is that
he was for many years a school-master in Smyrna; that, being visited
by one Mentes, the commander of a Leucadian ship, he was induced by
him to leave his occupation and travel; that, in company with this
captain, he visited the various countries around the shores of the
Mediterranean, and at last was left at Ithaca, in consequence of a
weakness in his eyes. While in this island, he was entertained by a
man of fortune named Mentor, who narrated to him the stories upon
which afterwards the Odyssey was founded. On the return of Mentes, he
accompanied him to Colophon, where he became totally blind. He then
returned to Smyrna, and afterwards removed to Cyme (called also Cuma),
in AEolis, where he received great applause in the recitations of his
poems, but no pecuniary reward; the people alleging that they could
not maintain all the Homeroi, or _blind men_, and hence he obtained
the name of _Homer_. Thence he went about from place to place,
acquiring much wealth by his recitations, and died at the Island of
Ios, one of the Cyclades, where he was buried.

The works attributed to Homer consist of the two epic poems, the
_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, of twenty-four books each, the
_Batrachomyomachia_, or "Battle of the Frogs and Mice," a humorous,
mock-heroic poem, and somewhat of a parody on the _Iliad_; the
_Margites_, a satirical, personal satire, and about thirty _Hymns_.
All of these but the two great epics are now, however, considered as
spurious.

But it was left to modern skepticism (which seems to think that to
doubt shows a higher order of intellect than to believe on evidence)
to maintain the bold position that the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" were
a collection of separate lays by different authors, arranged and put
together for the first time during the tyranny and by the order of
Pisistratus, at Athens, about 550 B.C. The chief supporters of this
theory are the celebrated German scholars, Wolf and Heyne, who
flourished about the year 1800.

Those who may desire to go into the subject fully will read Wolf's
"Prolegomena," and the strictures of his great opponent, G.W. Nitzsch;
but a succinct account of the argument may be found in Browne's
"Classical Literature," and in the "History of Greek Literature," by
Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd.

Even Wolf himself candidly declares that when he reads the "Iliad" he
finds such unity of desi