Scholar: Iliad, Odyssey Penned by Woman: Andrew Dalby, author of Rediscovering Homer, argues that the attribution of the poems to Homer was founded on a falsehood.
Homer?s link to the poems, Dalby writes, stems from an "ill-informed postclassical text, the anonymous Life of Homer, fraudulently ascribed to Herodotus," a respected Greek historian who lived from around 484-425 B.C.
Herodotus does mention Homer in his work Histories, but by then the legend of the mysterious, blind, male poet had already taken root, Dalby says. [...]
Aside from the poems themselves, no concrete clues exist to identify their author, but Dalby builds a case that the person probably was a woman.
"In many oral traditions, the best and most reliable creators, the ones who are used by folklore collectors, happen to be women," he said.
Dalby explained that women throughout the ancient world were "often the last and most skillful exponents of an oral tradition."
