A little book i’ve got here ,dated 1757, Believes Homer to be a very well travel individual of high status in Greece society.
“An excellent well travelled Geographer with access to the accounts of his countrymen”.
“Collecting the Stories of those around ,and editing them into an accurate account of proceedings “.
(Thomas Blackwell)
Sounds plausible. (?)
Of course that means he didn’t really write them. Kind of like how the Grimm brothers didn’t really write those fairy tales, they just put existing tales to paper. It’s a quite entertaining academic debate, he might or might not have existed and if he did exist he might or might not have actually created those stories.