Life of Homer (Pseudo-Herodotus)

What, if anything, within the work can be retained in light of the author's apparent illegitimacy is a question that has been debated throughout classical scholarship.

It was, on this view, written long after Herodotus' time, perhaps in the 3rd or 4th centuries AD, when there was an audience for literary pastiches, such as the Letters of Alciphron, and fraudulent attributions, as in the Historia Augusta.

The character of the wandering blind bard, Demodocus, in the Odyssey, fits the characterization of Homer in the Life.

For example, one reason for some credibility is that all the Lives were "compiled from the Alexandrian period onward but sometimes incorporating stories from the classical age".

[8] Ingeniously linking the famous poet with various places that figure prominently in his works and in well-known legends about him, the Life depicts Homer as the illegitimate son of Cretheis of Argos and his ward, who was the daughter of Melanopus of Cyme in Aeolis (Asia Minor).

Having failed in a bid for municipal sponsorship at Cyme, he moved to Phocaea, where another schoolteacher, Thestorides, offered him food and lodging in exchange for the right to record his poetry in writing.

Thestorides retreated hastily, and it was in Chios that Homer composed those of his supposed works that were meant for children, including the Batrachomyomachia or "Battle of the Frogs and Mice".