The Emperor Hadrian asked the Oracle at Delphi who Homer really was, and she said that he was Ithacan, the son of Epikaste and Telemachus, from the Odyssey.

But even if a single author, Homer, were indeed responsible for the two major epics ascribed to his name, nothing is known of him. Indeed, there is no concrete evidence that such a person ever existed. We do have a number of traditions holding that he was blind (perhaps because in the Aeolian dialect of Cyme,homēros bore this meaning.), and that he was born on the island of Chios or, elsewhere in Ionia, where various cities vied in claiming him as one of their native sons.

It has repeatedly been argued and questioned whether the same poet was responsible for both the Iliad and the Odyssey. While many find it unlikely that the Odyssey was written by one person, others find that the epic is generally in the same style, and too consistent to support the theory of multiple authors. A further view is that the Iliad was composed by 'Homer' in his maturity, and the Odyssey was a work of his old age. The Batrachomyomachia, Homeric hymns, and cyclic epics are generally agreed to be later than the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Homer was even at one time credited with the entire Epic Cycle. The genre included further poems on the Trojan War as well as the Theban poems about Oedipus and his sons. Other works, such as the corpus of Homeric Hymns, the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog-Mouse War," Βατραχομυομαχία), and the Margites were also attributed to him, but this is now believed to be unlikely.

Most scholars agree that the Iliad and Odyssey underwent a process of standardization and refinement out of older material beginning in the 8th century BC. An important role in this standardization appears to have been played by the Athenian tyrant Hipparchus, who reformed the recitation of Homeric poetry at the Panathenaic festival. Many classicists hold that this reform must have involved the production of a canonical written text.

Other scholars, however, still support the idea that Homer was a real person. Since nothing is known of the life of this Homer, the common joke, often recycled also in disputes about the authorship of plays ascribed to Shakespeare, has it that the poems "were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name." Samuel Butler argued that a young Sicilian woman wrote the Odyssey (but not the Iliad), an idea further pursued by Robert Graves in his novel Homer's Daughter.
 

In the Hellenistic period, Homer was the subject of a hero cult in several cities. A shrine devoted to Homer or Homereion was built in Alexandria by Ptolemy IV Philopator in the late 3rd century BC. This shrine is described in Aelian's 3rd century work Varia Historia. He described how Ptolemy had "placed in a circle around the statue [of Homer] all the cities who laid claim to Homer" and mentions a painting of the poet by the artist Galaton, which apparently depicted Homer in the aspect of Oceanus as the source of all poetry.

A marble relief, found in Italy but thought to have been sculpted in Egypt, depicts the apotheosis of Homer. It shows Ptolemy and his wife/sister Arsinoe III standing beside a seated Homer. The poet is shown flanked by figures from the Odyssey and Iliad, with the nine Muses standing above them and a procession of worshippers approaching an altar, believed to represent the Alexandrine Homereion. Apollo, god of music and poetry, also appears, along with a female figure tentatively identified as Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses. Zeus, the king of the gods, presides over the proceedings. The relief demonstrates vividly how the Greeks considered Homer not just a great poet, but the divinely inspired source of all literature.

Homereia also stood at Chios, Ephesus and Smyrna, which were among the city-states that claimed to be the birthplace of Homer. Strabo (14.1.37) records a Homeric temple in Smyrna with an ancient xoanon or cult statue of the poet. He also mentions sacrifices carried out to Homer by the inhabitants of Argos, presumably at another Homereion.
 

(texts in Homeric Greek)

• Demetrius Chalcondyles editio princeps, Florence, 1488
• the Aldine editions (1504 and 1517)
• Th. Ridel, Strassbourg, ca. 1572, 1588 and 1592.
• Wolf (Halle, 1794-1795; Leipzig, 1804 1807)
• Spitzner (Gotha, 1832-1836)
• Bekker (Berlin, 1843; Bonn, 1858)
• La Roche (Odyssey, 1867-1868; Iliad, 1873-1876, both at Leipzig)
• Ludwich (Odyssey, Leipzig, 1889-1891; Iliad, 2 vols., 1901 and 1907)
• W. Leaf (Iliad, London, 1886-1888; 2nd ed. 1900-1902)
• W. Walter Merry and James Riddell (Odyssey i.-xii., 2nd ed., Oxford, 1886)
• Monro (Odyssey xiii.-xxiv. with appendices, Oxford, 1901)
• Monro and Allen (Iliad), and Allen (Odyssey, 1908, Oxford).
• D.B. Monro and T.W. Allen 1917-1920, Homeri Opera (5 volumes: Iliad = 3rd edition, Odyssey = 2nd edition), Oxford. ISBN 0-19-814528-4, ISBN 0-19-814529-2, ISBN 0-19-814531-4, ISBN 0-19-814532-2, ISBN 0-19-814534-9
• H. van Thiel 1991, Homeri Odyssea, Hildesheim. ISBN 3-487-09458-4, 1996, Homeri Ilias, Hildesheim. ISBN 3-487-09459-2
• M.L. West 1998-2000, Homeri Ilias (2 volumes), Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-71431-9, ISBN 3-598-71435-1
• P. von der Mühll 1993, Homeri Odyssea, Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-71432-7