'While the ancients had no doubt that Homer was a real bard who composed the monumental epics, nothing certain is known about him. Dr D'Angour explains: 'It's generally supposed that the great epics which go under Homer's name, the Iliad and Odyssey, were composed orally, without the aid of writing, some time in the 8th Century BC, the fruit of a tradition of oral minstrelsy stretching back for centuries. There is even doubt about the existence of the man said to have written the Odyssey, Homer, who is considered to be the greatest of Greek epic poets. First mentioned in the Odyssey, it describes how Greek soldiers were able to take the city of Troy after a fruitless ten-year siege by hiding in a giant horse supposedly left as an offering to the goddess Athena.īut was it just a myth? Probably, says Oxford University classicist Dr Armand D'Angour: 'Archaeological evidence shows that Troy was indeed burned down but the wooden horse is an imaginative fable, perhaps inspired by the way ancient siege-engines were clothed with damp horse-hides to stop them being set alight.' The story of the Trojan Horse is well-known.
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