[moose07]

I've never noticed a difference in the writing style through the works ,so all i can think is that he was a historian of some repute , in order to have access to all of this information, and a clever editor and story teller in his own right.
This would give him the ability to seamlessly compile all of the collected works of others into one.
“A collection of popular campfire stories for the education of children and the enrichment of our culture.”
Do i believe he existed as one man.....yes. But we shall probably never know for sure, unless a first edition is someday found. :)

[discostu]

Did you actually read it in the ancient Greek? If you did I applaud you (no really, that’s an awesome thing to have learned and done), if not then writing style is about the translator not the writer. Of course even in the ancient Greek the stuff had been handed down and passed around for a long time, which could have caused changes in the text. Remember the window for when he lived even among those that are sure he did is almost 500 years.

I personally don’t think he existed. I think he was created by a group of performers that wanted to do a certain set of stories a certain way and created a legend around how these versions of these stories were “handed down” to them.