It is perhaps not true that Homer was so poor as to be obliged to beg
for his bread; but it is probable that he earned his living by traveling
from city to city through many parts of Greece and Asia Minor, reciting
his poems in the palaces of princes, and at public assemblies. This was
one of the customs of ancient times, when the art of writing was either
not known, or very little practiced. The poets, or bards, of those days
committed their compositions to memory, and repeated them aloud at
gatherings of the people, particularly at festivals and athletic games,
of which the ancient Greeks were very fond. At those games prizes and
rewards were given to the bards as well as to the athletes.

It is said that in the latter part of his life the great poet became
blind, and that this was why he received the name of Homer, which
signified a blind person. The name first given to him, we are told, was
Mel-e-sigʹe-nes, from the river Meʹles, a small stream on the banks of
which his native city of Smyrna was situated.

So little being known of Homer's life, there has been much difference of
opinion about him among learned men. Many have believed that Homer never
existed. Others have thought that the Iliad and Odyssey were composed
not by one author, but by several. "Some," says the English poet, Walter
Savage Landor, "tell us that there were twenty Homers, some deny that
there was ever one." Those who believe that there were "twenty Homers"
think that different parts of the two great poems--the Iliad and
Odyssey--were composed by different persons, and that all the parts were
afterwards put together in the form in which they now appear. The
opinion of most scholars at present, however, is that Homer did really
exist, that he was a wandering bard, or minstrel, who sang or recited
verses or ballads composed by himself, about the great deeds of heroes
and warriors, and that those ballads, collected and arranged in after