Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has hit theatres across North America. Suddenly, everyone has Homer on their mind. If China has Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West, the West has The Iliad and The Odyssey. These are civilisation-defining monuments, about which children know the stories and scholars spend a lifetime probing every detail. The identity of Homer has always intrigued scholars over the ages. Samuel Butler, who translated both The Iliad and The Odyssey, was convinced a...