Note 236 — Chapter XXI · GRECIAN EPIC.—HOMERIC POEMS.
Reading edition
Even Aristotle ascribed to Homer a divine parentage: a damsel of the isle of Ios, pregnant by some god, was carried off by pirates to Smyrna, at the time of the Ionic emigration, and there gave birth to the poet (Aristotel. ap. Plutarch. Vit. Homer. p. 1059).
Plato seems to have considered Homer as having been an itinerant rhapsode, poor and almost friendless (Republ. p. 600).