What reader could fail to be enthralled by the Iliad and the Odyssey, those greatest heroic epics of antiquity? Yet the author of these immortal texts remains, in the end, an enigma. The central paradox of 'Homer' is that - while recognized as producing poetry of incomparable genius - even in the ancient world nobody knew who he was. As a result, the mythmaker became the subject of myth. For the satirist Lucian (c 125 - c 180 CE) he was a captive Babylonian. Other traditions have Homer born on Smyrna or the island of Chios, or portray him as a blind and wandering minstrel. In his new and...