Homer is the most famous author in Western civilization, and he probably never existed — at least not as a single person who sat down and composed the Iliad and the Odyssey. The “Homeric Question” — whether these epics were written by one poet, compiled from oral traditions by many, or assembled by later editors — has consumed scholars for over two centuries and remains one of the most fascinating unsolved problems in literary history.

This episode examines the evidence for and against a historical Homer, the oral tradition theory that explains how epics can exist without a single author, and what the debate reveals about how stories become literature.

• The ancient traditions about Homer — the blind bard, the seven cities that claimed him, the biographical legends
• The “Homeric Question” — Wolf, Parry, Lord, and the scholarly debate over single versus multiple authorship
• Milman Parry’s oral-formulaic theory and the Yugoslav singers who proved epics could be composed live
• Why the question matters beyond scholarship — what Homer’s authorship tells us about how cultures create literature