Abstract
The aim of this paper is to analyze how the Homeric poems are approached as historical sources in Ancient History Handbooks. First, it will be presented an academic context of transformations in the way the oral composition process is comprehended. Secondly, the transformations on the idea of authorship is discussed. The repercussion of those ideas in the interpretation of the role the poems have as historical sources will be analyzed on each Handbook, with a great variety of possible dates being identified. Lastly, the present paper intends to demonstrate that there is a tendency to take Homer not merely as the author of the Iliad or the Odyssey, or as the name that identifies those poems as a group. There is another tendency, to transform Homer in an authority over an almost mythic temporality, one that is in the origins of a historical Greek society.
Keywords
Ancient History; Homeric poems; authority and authorship; oral poetry; History handbooks