Note 35 — BOOK III. Grecian States and Colonies from their Earliest Period to the Accession of Alexander the Great.

Homer was an Asiatic Greek who lived probably about B. C. 850. Seven cities claimed the honor of his birth, which ancient critics commonly accorded to Chios, and modern, to Smyrna. Many legends describe his sorrowful and changeful life, shadowed by poverty and blindness; but we can be sure of little except that he was the author of some of the earliest and yet greatest poems in the world’s literature.